Herbert: Babes In Toyland / The Red Mill

Born in Dublin in 1859, Victor Herbert was, on his mother's side, the grandson of the Irish writer Samuel Lover. His father, a Dublin barrister, died when his son was very young and Herbert was later to recall the musical inspiration he derived from visiting his maternal grandfather in Sevenoaks, where one of the many visitors, the cellist AIfredo Piatti, made a strong impression on him. In 1866 his mother remarried, taking as her husband a German doctor and settling now in Stuttgart. There he had his education at the Gymnasium, where his early musical interests were reflected in the study of the piano, flute and piccolo, later turning to the cello. His family's position suggested that music rather than medicine might offer a possible career for Herbert. In 1874, he left school and started lessons in Baden-Baden with Bernhard Cossmann, a distinguished virtuoso who had served as principal cellist in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Mendelssohn and in Weimar under Liszt. Herbert followed this with an early career as an orchestral player and as a soloist. Finally, after working in the orchestra established under Eduard Strauss in Vienna, he returned to Stuttgart, where he joined the Court Orchestra and embarked on study at the Stuttgart Conservatory, chiefly with Max Seifritz, who encouraged him to turn his attention also to composition. In Stuttgart Herbert was able to appear as a soloist and also, in 1883, perform his own Suite for Cello and Orchestra, Opus 3. Two years later he offered audiences his First Cello Concerto and in the same year started to teach at the Neuer Stuttgarter Musikschule, established in October 1885. A year later he married a singer at the Stuttgart Opera, Therese Foerster, moving with her to employment with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, where she had been invited to join the German company.