at his fingers’ ends, not without a certain pedantic quality to restrain the musician’s temperament, which increasing years have rather mellowed and softened than intensified, he found his orchestra a body of men loosely knit together and sorely in need of the rigorous discipline that makes for perfect mobility and adaptability in orchestras as well as in armies. There is something of the martinet in Mr. Gericke’s nature, and he needed all he had in those first years of the formative period. The greatest distinctions of the Boston orchestra, its perfection of ensemble, its brilliancy, its plasticity, its beauty of tone, are his work. He achieved them not only through drill and the instillation of an ardent feeling of esprit de corps, but also, and in large measure, through the improvement of the personnel.
Drawn by S. Ivanowski
The Kettledrums
There were many veterans and some incompetents of the earlier dispensation in the orchestra when he came to it, who had found in it a “pleasant refuge” for declining years. Many new men came from Europe at his summons,—young men of eager blood, like the “young lions” of the Conservatory orchestra that were the delight of Berlioz in Paris,—for whom the orchestra was not a refuge, but a field for ambitious and energetic labor.
It was a fortunate chance that brought Mr. Kneisel, Mr. Loeffler, Mr. Svecenski, Mr. Roth, Mr. Giese, the Adamowski brothers, Mr. Schuecker, and still others in the earlier years, and that has since
