We much regretted not to see you at dinner to-day; pray let us have the pleasure of your company, if not earlier, at least next Sunday. Have you kindly thought over our request concerning lessons? You would sincerely oblige us by consenting, if you could do so without interfering with the arrangements you have made for your stay in this place. Please do not set down these repeated requests to indiscretion, but attribute them solely to the wish that our children should be enabled to profit by the presence of the “prince des pianistes.”
Being uncertain whether my son will find you at home, I write this line to ask if you feel inclined to visit the Sing-Akademie. Felix will at any rate call for you, as his way lies in that direction. If you are disengaged, will you join our family dinner at three o’clock, or, should that be impossible, will you accompany Felix, after the “Akademie” (it lasts from five to seven o’clock), and be one of our small circle at tea?
If I may be allowed to renew my request that you will give lessons to my two eldest children, be good enough to let me know your terms. I should like them to begin at once, that they may profit as much as possible during the time of your stay here.
The relative positions of teacher and pupil were soon to be exchanged for friendship of a lasting character,--Moscheles, on the one hand, greeting with the most cordial sympathy the great promises of the youthful genius; Mendelssohn, on the other, appreciating with all the warmth of his artistic nature what had been achieved by the maturer artist, his senior by sixteen years.
In the autumn of 1826 Moscheles, then again on a concert tour through Germany, made a short stay in Berlin, and spent many happy hours with his friends the Mendelssohns. Felix had just completed his Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and played it, arranged for two performers, with his sister Fanny. Amongst other compositions that mark these early days of his musical career, were the Sonata in E major and an Overture in C. Moscheles in his diary expresses his warm appreciation of those works, and comments at the same time on the fact that “this young genius is so far scarcely recognized beyond the small circle of his teachers and personal friends. One more prophet,” he adds, “who will have to lay the foundation of fame in another country.”