MUSICAL COURIER
6
LONDON IMMERSED IN ULTRA-MODERN MUSIC
New Works by Bax, Bruckner, Milhaud and Tcherepnin Are Performed—Harold Bauer Negotiates Charity Concert— Klein Believes Singing Mozart Will Cure Voice Ills—Roland Hayes Wins Success as Singer of Negro Spirituals
January 4, 19 23
and dances, carols for unaccompanied choir, string works, songs, all by Arnold Bax, had been given in Queen’s Hall. This unusual quantity of new music by a native composer naturally attracted much attention, although the name of Arnold Bax was already familiar to the London public. The Flonzaley Quartet played a work by the same composer in Wigmore Hall in October. Music so new in style and unfamiliar in content has not yet found a broadly sympathetic public, but there is no denying that Arnold Bax has won the admiration of the critics and a large circle of friends by his consistent seriousness of purpose and elevated style, which avoids the conventional and the commonplace.
More Rost—And Why.
The two American singers, whose work so favorably impressed me a few weeks ago, Greta Rost, contralto, and Foster Why, baritone, are meeting with much success at their various appearances in London. One of their most interesting recitals was before a tremendously enthusiastic gathering of poor people in an East End settlement. A week or so later, they appeared at the other end of the social scale at one of the American Ambassador’s receptions. There have been a number of concert engagements, as well, and miscellaneous solos at clubs, besides a great quantity of record making. But of this I shall say more later.
MoCKRIDGE AND WESTMINSTER.
Now and then I get out of the beaten professional track and turn aside into the byways to see the youngsters girding up their loins for the coming fray. The pupils of Whitney Mockridge in Wigmore Hall used to differ from the singers
who give recitals in that their nerves were visibly disturbed by the sight of an audience. But the young idealists were clearly learning how to shoot and the weapon with which they were armed was, as the Daily Telegraph put it, the method of the great Lamperti. It is always interesting to note the personal touches which make so much difference among the pupils who study at the same time under the direction of the same teacher. No better illustration could be wished than that furnished by Westminster School in the cloisters and grounds of Westminster Abbey. Among its pupils are the names of Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Dryden, Prior, Cowper, Southey, Christopher Wren, John Locke. _ No amount of identical teaching could make those men think and write alike.
Klein Champions Mozart.
When a beautifully accomplished artist like Leonine Zifado sings Gluck and Mozart in the appropriate styles, which a very young singer can only have learned from a teacher of long experience and scholarship, it is natural to ask who the teacher is. I found it was Hermann Klein, who appears to have made a special study of Mozart. He thinks that Mozart’s vocal music is the one thing necessary to save so many singers from the ruin to which the dramatic recitative of Wagner has brought those who were not well enough grounded to undertake Wagnerian work. Hermann Klein believes that the reaction, which began in Munich about twenty-five years ago as an offset to Bayreuth, is all for the best in the vocal world. All I can say is that if Leonie Zifado sings as well as she does because she has worked hard at Mozart, then the sooner every singer takes up Mozart the better.
Roland Hayes Sells Out.
One of the most successful singers to appear before the London public for several seasons is Roland Hayes, the colored tenor from Boston, Mass. Not only does he sing well, but^ his voice has a musical charm, and he does Negro spirituals in a manner which invariably carries conviction. Roland Hayes is too young a man ever to have tasted the bitterness of slavery himself. Yet he has inherited a temperament and an emotional fervor from generations of ancestors who were never free to do anything but hope. No wonder he always fills his concert hall. At the last recital, prior to his departure for America this week, he drew a larger audience than Aeolian Hall would hold. Roland Hayes, of course, sings all the standard songs in German, French, and English. But it is as an interpreter of Negro spirituals that he stands in a class by himself.
Clarence Lucas.
A. Walter Kramer Married
Word has been received that A. Walter Kramer was married to Rosalie V. Rehling, daughter of Mrs. William Rehling of Baltimore, in Berlin on December 22.
already ornamented these columns, gave a concert in Aeolian Hall devoted to the work of Darius Milhaud and Alex. Tcherepnin. The Frenchman’s sonata for two violins and piano is not an epoch-marking work. Some of it is simple to the point of childishness and some of it is painfully discordant. The rest of it is just ordinary, everyday music which can be written anywhere at any time. The new works by the Russian proved to be more interesting. The composer played ten short pieces on the piano which very much pleased, his hearers. He was recalled so often that he finally announced in French that he would play a composition by Max Reger, in the Scarlatti style. Tcherepnin thereupon proceeded to give the piano the worst thrashing I ever heard. I went away with a profound respect for the Chappell piano, which could bear up under such an assault, and doubting if Dempsey was really entitled to the slugging belt. This is the Tcherepnin who wrote the concerto Moiseiwitsch played in America last season.
Palestrina in the Fog.
The Vatican Choir, which the Daniel Mayer Company has been managing with gratifying success throughout England and Ireland, has sung three times in the Albert Hall and each time to a more crowded house. One night
London treated its visitors to a thoroughly un-Italian fog. The ceiling of the huge auditorium was lost in a misty veil and the electric lights peered through like luminaries in the spacious firmament on high. It was like a near view of the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. Down below, on the earthly stage, the Vatican vocalists sang Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Ludovico da Vittoria, and other composers, whose works were the talk of the town when Michaelangelo and Raffaelo were busy in Rome. This music was the last word in contemporary art, when the tiny Dutch colony at the southern end of the Manhattes was building the log houses that preceded the gigantic buildings which now tower above Manhattan Island. Both Palestrina and Orlando were born before Jacques Cartier discovered the St. Lawrence River and the Indian town of Hochelaga, where Montreal now stands. This venerable music, therefore, has a claim to our respect, even though its appeal may not be felt by modern tastes. Has not Sir Joshua Reynolds said that “the works of those who have stood the test of ages have a claim to that respect and veneration to which no modern can pretend?” The works of the painters, however, are entirely finished by the painters themselves. The works of the musicians have to be revealed to the public by the interpreters. But where are the interpreters of sixteenth century music to be found today? Surely those most likely to have most of the traditions are singers from the Vatican, where these works were first sung under the direction of Palestrina himself. It is of no more importance that a modern casual hearer likes the Vatican Choir’s rendition of Palestrina than that a modern dressmaker likes the costume of the Venus de Milo. As a matter of fact, the audiences in the Albert Hall liked the singing very much. Nearly every number on the last program was followed by an extra number after the familiarly enthusiastic fashion of a Sousa concert.
Goodson Plays Tschaikowsky.
Katharine Goodson has been heard frequently of late. Only a few privileged friends heard her play Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with the Jugo-Slav violinist, Balokovic, and the B flat Beethoven trio, with Balokovic and Tkalcic, in a private music room. But a very large audience greeted her in Central Hall, at an Enoch Concert, and a still larger audience heard her a few days later at the Albert Hall. With the London Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Albert Coates, she played Tschaikowsky’s B flat minor concerto with remarkable effect and was recalled to the platform half a dozen times for her brilliant execution and rhythmical precision. I found her performance a welcome relief in a program full of very new and very serious works.
The New Bax Symphony.
The very newest work was a symphony by Arnold Bax, a young English composer, who has made his presence strongly felt during the past season. A few days previously, a miscellaneous concert of orchestral works, piano sonatas
London, December IS.—Bruckner himself nas given the best of reasons why his symphonies should not be played very often. At a recent concert by the London Symphony Orchestra, Albert Coates had his players furnish the audience with Bruckner’s melodic arguments and contrapuntal discussions about the merits of music as^ a form of entertainment. The audience, however, was in an unreasoning
ARNOLD BAX,
perhaps the most prominent of the young English composers, whose works have been played recently by the Flonzaley Quartet, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal
Philharmonic Society. (Photo by Herbert Lambert)
frame of mind and appeared to prefer the emotional flare of Wagner to the mental gymnastics of Bruckner. Albert Coates has not shone hitherto as a conductor of placid counterpoint and eminently decorous melodies. He was much more in his element at the second ■Philharmonic concert, when he began with Strauss and ended with Tschaikowsky. The Strauss work was a suite selected from the music written for Moliere’s comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentil-homme. The music is, of course, pure Strauss and the humor is not French. It was probably written for a German audience listening to a German translation of the play.
Bax’s Tintagel.
Arnold Bax, a young Englishman, furnished the most important item on the program. It was a tone poem, Tintagel, of great length, requiring a very large orchestra. The harmonies are of the prevailing type which young composers use to prove that natural intervals found in nature’s harmonics and overtones are entirely wrong. Naturally, one hearing of such a work leaves nothing but a blurred, confused impression on the mind. The tone poem was well received, however, and the young composer was recalled to the platform several times.
The great applause of the evening was for Casals, who played a concerto, for cello, by Lalo. This Spanish artist is a great favorite here.
Harold Bauer’s American Accent.
Harold Bauer gathered a number of first rank musical artists around him and gave an unusual sort of concert in Wigmore Hall. In Brahms’ piano quartet, he_ had the help of Albert Sammons, Lionel Tertis, and Cedric Sharpe. In the Bloch sonata for violin and piano, he and Albert Sammons joined forces. In the Bach concerto for three pianos,׳ he was assisted by Myra Hess and Irene Scharrer, who were quite worthy to be associated with him as pianists. The hall was packed and the enthusiasm of the audience was boundless. The speech, which Harold Bauer found himself constrained to make, revealed to English ears that the former London pianist had acquired a typically American accent during his many years of sojourn in the New World. Many of his hearers went away wondering_ if a great deal of his artistic stature had not also been attained in America.
Bare: Legs and Socks.
I missed the first movement of the Brahms piano quartet because I sat talking in the lobby with Mrs. Kreisler, who expressed herself as delighted with her husband’s triumphal tour through England, and who was also full of complaints against the climate of London, where she could not get warm. I told her that I had heard Americans from New York and Philadelphia complain about the cold at Atlantic City only because they were not used to sea air. Visitors often see only the eastern part of the west side of London, ignoring the vast northern and southern sections. London Bridge, which is at the extreme west end of the docks, is three miles east of Regent street, where the visitor’s London begins. Mrs. Kreisler and other American visitors cannot understand how English children can be comfortably warm, with their bare legs and short socks. They get used to the bracing sea air.
This Bauer concert differed from other concerts in a peculiar way. Most concerts are given at a loss to the chief performer, who has his remuneration in glory and newspaper renown. But all the musicians and the manager of the concert, Mr. Taylor, gave their services on condition that the proceeds be devoted to some worthy cause.
Tcherepnin vs. Milhaud.
Adsla Fachiri, violinist, assisted by her friend, Jelly D'Aranyi, another violinist, whose mouth-filling name has
HAROLD BAUER’S CHARITY CONCERT IN LONDON.
Harold Bauer recently organized in London a concert of special music, similar to those of the Beethoven Association. All the artists donated their services, the manager as well, and the considei'able proceeds scere devoted to charity. From left to right (front row), Sir London Ronald, Harold Bauer, Albert Sammons, Lionel Tertis; (center row)Irene Scharrer, Myra Hess, and the Ladies’ Quartet; (back row) string players from the orchestra.