47
MUSICAL COURIER
January 11, 1923
THE
STEINWAY
PIANO
stands unapproached in any of the cardinal and essential features which endear it to the artist and the music-loving public the wide world over. It is a glorious masterpiece in power, sonority, singing quality and perfect harmonic effects. Its sound volume is overwhelming, its sound qualities are bewitching and entrancing beyond measure and beyond praise —they are the marvel of performer and listener alike. Withal, THE STEINWAY PIANO has no equal for endurance; it will far outlast any other piano. And, what is more, its price is but little higher than the price of other good pianos.
STEINWAY & SONS
STEINWAY HALL 107-109 East 14th St., New York
Represented by the Foremost Dealers Everywhere
>ous tonight. I think it must be the Spring air. . . It has put roses in your cheeks,” she added playfully. “Ypu don’t look a day over twenty.”
The older woman accepted the compliment with unfeigned pleasure, but soon the look of irritation returned to her face.
“I’m not feeling especially well. It’s the old shooting pain in my back. I’ve sent Henry for the Doctor and he should be here presently.” She rose and pulled shut the blinds of the window. “You really ought to keep the windows closed these chilly Spring evenings, my dear.”
The girl crossed the room and aided her mother to fasten the latch.
“I’m sorry, mother, I didn’t think.”
“By the way, has the boy brought those potatoes yet?” “Not yet, mother,” was the patient reply.
“I do wish they would send' things on time. Here it’s
been two days and------” She was interrupted by the sound
of the doorbell. In a moment Dr. Tyler entered the room. He was a frequent visitor of late, and after a few words of greeting he drew a chair up to the table.
“I see—same old complaint? Well, it’s partly that, and then too, you ought to get out in the air more. You say the other medicine is all gone? Take two of this kind tonight and I’ll send the others in the morning. . . No, I’m afraid I can’t get back tonight. I’m more than busy over at the Asylum just now—two patients sick, and one ran away last night.”
The girl had finished with the dishes and stood looking out of the window, across the garden—steeped in the first mist of twilight—beyond to the road where he had first appeared—and might, again. She only half heard the doctor’s talking for her fancy was far in the lingering sunset beyond the Blue Ridge hills. The doctor’s next words came to her like the confused whispering of some evil dream.
“Yes, some sort of musician—lost his mind from over-study^ He’s perfectly sane on everything but his ‘ruined career’ as he calls it. We never allow him to see a piano.” The girl clasped the window-sash aod heard every word, every syllable as the doctor concluded.
“He always wears a cape—a hobby of his. No, I don’t think he could have gotten this far. Oh, no! We’ll catch him without any trouble.” The speaker rose and passed into the hall, their voices dying away.
She stood for a moment stunned—helpless. Her body swayed unsteadily and she grasped a chair for support. One hand brushed quickly across her eyes, but the room was still there—the white, bare little table, the straight-backed chairs beside it. She heard her mother climbing the stairs. A door closed above. With a dull sob she blindly thrust open the low window and stumbled out into the night.
It was perhaps two hours later that her mother entered the music room with a lamp in her hand. The moonlight, stealing through the lattice outside the window,■ shone upon a tiny mirror on the wall. Its reflection was caught by a small vase that lay upset on one end of the piano. Across the keys and on the floor were scattered a few wild roses. At the instrument sat the girl with her head in her arms, crying softly to herself. Her mother tip-toed quietly across the room and placed an arm about her shoulders.
“You must not worry so about your finale, my dear,” she whispered. “You really must not. You have a birthday tomorrow and it’s time you were in bed. Wouldn’t it be better if you stopped practicing for the rest of the summer ?”
The girl raised her head, dried her eyes as best she could, and pressed a clumsy kiss on her mother’s cheek.
“Yes, mother, I guess I’m foolish. I’ll stop practicing for the rest—for the rest of—the summer.”
“That’s a sensible girl. Remember that everything is leading to the one great end. You must try to keep that in mind.”
The girl paused in the hallway at the foot of the stairs while her mother ascended. The stranger’s words and boyish smile, as he had stood in the half-open door, kept haunting her. “I bring pearls from the Rajah of all the Indies to the first Princess of the land. . . Sorrow—sorrow is well in its place—one stamp of maturity. But we are young, we must have happiness.” And then, like a droning, insistent undertone, her mother’s words. “The great end—you must try to keep that in mind. You have a birthday tomorrow and it’s time you were in bed.”
She turned and plodded slowly up the stairs. .
National Opera Club Christmas Fete
The Christmas fete and ball given by the National Opera Club, Baroness von Klenner president, on the evening of December 28 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, was one of the gland fetes of the Christmas season. The program opened with the National Opera Club choral of about thirty-two voices, directed very skillfully by Romualdo Sapio. They sang a group of old French Christmas carols, which were well rendered and much applauded.
President von Klenner gave a hearty, witty greeting to all present, and presented to the audience a very sweet idea in giving each one a little blue crepe paper bag, with a Bethlehem star on the bag; each person was asked to put a little donation in it for the benefit of the National Opera Club. The choral also sang two excerpts from the opera Mireille.
A pleasing number on the program was the scene from the opera Hansel and Gretel, finely sung by the choral. Viola Mattfeld, in scenes from Hansel and Gretel, was very charming; she has a very sweet voice. Inez Gauthier, as Hansel, acted and sang very well. Mrs. John Gans, Elsie Peck, Elinor W. Dunnell and Pauline T. Rubsam, all did their parts appropriately. A reception and ball closed the evening of entertainment.
New York Acclaims Samaroff.
Enthusiasm ran high when Olga Samaroff made her first appearance after an absence of two years in New York as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, under Leopold Stokowski. So hearty was her reception that attention was called to it in several of the newspaper accounts of the concert. Madame Samaroff made her second appearance with orchestra in New York this season on January 7, when she was soloist with the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera Sunday night concert. January 16 she will be heard in recital in Washington, D. C.
The Finale
(Continued from page 10)
slow, almost plaintive resolutions, interspersed now and again with bursts of passionate crescendo, falling softly and tenderly into the sad, little refrain—a sort of requiem for all the striving emotions that preceded it. Suddenly it hesitated, fluttered, and stopped. As she played the girl’s face was aglow—almost beautiful. There was a strange lopk in the man’s eyes when she turned toward him.
“Oh, but the finale,” he pleaded with a quick start. “Please—please finish it.” Then he added: “Is it Rossini’s, or Meyerbeer’s ?”
The girl shook her head, while a flush deepened the color of her cheeks. “I wrote it,” she smiled, “But I haven’t been able---”
“You did!” exclaimed the other. “You did! Why, it’s a masterpiece—it’s beautiful!	.	. But the finale—please
play the finale.”
“I have never written it,” answered the girl, as her eyes fell before his ardent gaze. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Finally the former rose from the piano. “Won’t you play something now that has a finale?” she smiled.
The stranger seated himself and for a moment rested his hands lightly on the keys. Then he began playing, slowly at first, but soon with firmer touch and fuller tone. It was her own piece that fell upon her astonished ears. He came to the place where she had stopped, pondered a moment, then continued into a wonderful, masterful, closing strain. It wove together the whole piece and sent it rushing in one glad, tumultuous volume to the end. Like the transmuting wand of the sorcerer it changed the sadness into joy, gathered together the groping, uncertain measures of the music and welded them into a great, lovely harmony of sound—piecing out the interrupted theme with a beautiful finale.
When he had finished and sat looking up at her a new light shone in the girl’s dark eyes. She had a guilty feeling of having bared her soul to this stranger. It seemed hardly possible that he should so fully have comprehended and interpreted her composition. And yet she was glad that he had. He rose and they stood gazing at each other in silence.
“That was just the finale I’ve waited for,” she murmured. “It’s the finale that I’ve wanted all along.” There was a small vase of wild roses beside her on the piano and she slowly broke a blossom from its stem as she spoke. “I see now what I needed, where I made my mistake. I can’t thank you too much.”
A tender expression came ,into the stranger’s face. “It is my finale for the piece,” he smiled; “and I hope that it will be your finale, for it is happy, and the ending should be happy. Sorrow—sorrow is well in its place—one stamp of maturity—but we are young, we must have happiness.” He took a step nearer and started to say something, but suddenly the far-off look shot back into his eyes, and instead he bowed and took up his cape and hat.
“I must be going,” he added. “I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed myself. It is not often one meets so congenial a friend. And your playing!—young as I am, my opinion was once valued very highly, and when I tell you that you play well, you should be more than encouraged.” He turned toward the door. “Thanks for my visit—and may I hope to come again?”
A trace of disappointment passed across the face of the girl.
“Please do come again,” she answered without looking up. “You can have no idea how much I have enjoyed it.
.	. But, you—you haven’t told me your name.” They were
in the hallway and he paused in the half-open door. With a boyish smile he replied:
“I have no name—it died with my hopes of a career But you have my official appellation—I am the messenger of the Rajah of all the Indies.” Hat in hand he walked down the steps and paused at the bottom. “Goodby, first Princess of the land,” he said.
“Au revoir,” she called, tossing him the rose in her hand. “A gift for the king’s messenger.”
He turned quickly, doffed his cap, and in a moment had disappeared behind the lilacs by the gate.
* * *
There was a smile in the girl’s eyes when her mother came down to supper that evening. The latter noticed it with pleasure for of late she had been annoyed by the girl’s apparent melancholy. No doubt it had been the young man with his wonderful playing that had brought that look of interest back into her daughter’s eyes. Perhaps the girl’s own flagging ambition had been stimulated by the exhibition; she hoped so. But the mother did not know the real cause of the smile. Through all the long years there had remained in the heart of the girl a still, ember glow that love could nourish into flame. This stranger, this wanderer, with his boyish smile and his wonderful music, had rekindled the slow fire and brought a new and secret hope.
She was really happy as she sat down to serve her mother.
“Mother,” she began, “I have found my finale. It was like some great revelation when he played it for me. I knew it the moment I heard it; and I could have found it myself, I know, if I had not—well, if I had not somewhat lost track of the beautiful side of things.”
“You worry too much, my dear,” nodded the mother. “You must keep the great goal in mind. Try not to think of the petty troubles and disappointments: it’s difficult, but it can be done. And then, some day, you will stand before a great audience—my daughter—and you will play—your own composition perhaps. Ah, it will be worth giving up the rest for that I”
The other regarded her tea-spoon thoughtfully for a moment.
“I sometimes wonder, mother, whether it would be quite worth giving up—giving up everything, for that. Of course I love it, but it seems unfair that one should have to sacrifice—so much.”
“My child, my child, you must not talk that way.” The mother carefully folded her napkin and laid it neatly beside her plate. “You will see, some day. Put your love and passion into your work. The rest will be forgotten.”
The girl rose from the table and began humming softly to herself.
“Let’s not talk about it, mother. I feel terribly reb§l-
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