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MUSICAL COURIER
can express human emotions. When you hear Bach, does not your mind picture a story? It is the same with my music. It has no connection with words, pictures or colors.”
The trouble is that neither it nor his Serenade, which ended the program, was up to the advertisements, and they were written by Mr. Milhaud, himself, who ought to know. Here is what he said in speaking of the Serenade which he conducted: “My music is in direct line from Rameau, Berlioz, Chabrier, Debussy and Satie.” Now it is somewhat risky mentioning the names of Bach, Berlioz, Chabrier, Debussy and Satie, and then writing the kind of music that Mr. Milhaud does, which consists merely of all the clap-trap and tricks of the modernists, without an idea of any sort in it. All that any musician needs to write the sort of stulf that Mr. Milhaud offered is music paper, pen and ink, time and an utter lack of humor.
The other modern French items on the program were less objectionable. There were two Gymnopedies of Erik Satie, orchestrated by Debussy, written ’way back in 1887, which naturally sounded very quiet today, however startling they may have been at the time of their birth; there was a Pastorale d’Ete by Arthur Honegger, a nice little piece written before he began to go the same road that Mr. Milhaud walks; and there was Debussy’s Fete, which towered above anything else in the second half of the program like a telegraph pole above the alkali desert.
MARGARET MATZENAUER
On Wednesday evening of last week, Margaret Matzen-auer of the Metropolitan gave her first song recital in New York for several years. The vast auditorium was filled to hear this most versatile and interesting singer, in a program which suited her voice admirably. She began with a group of German songs by Bach, Brahms, Strauss and Wolff. In these, Mme. Matzenauer showed the remarkable beauty of her lower tone, the pure contralto quality that the American audience knew her by first. While the group was sung with considerable tonal beauty and artistry, it was not comparable with her second group of Russian songs. Gretchaninoff’s Over the Steppes was sung perhaps as well as anyone in the au'dience has ever heard it before. Arensky’s waltz, On Wings of Dreams, was rendered in a truly artistic manner—so much so, the audience demanded its repetition, and the second hearing was even more finished than the first; something very rare with.the average artist who never seems to quite equal the first attempt. Two Rachmaninoff songs followed. The third group contained two French numbers and two Spanish folk songs which have been revamped by Frank LaForge. The first one, an old folk song, Estrellit , proved to be an excellent number, and Mme. Matzenauer sang it with a distinction which caused the audience to demand a repetition. The second one, En Cuba, was not quite so fortunate in its appeal, nor did Mme. Matzenauer sing it with any special distinction. The last group of American songs, the first number written by Elinor Remick Warren, with the youthful composer at the piano. A number by Grilles and one by LaForge . and a particularly effective song by Roland Farley, completed the group.
An artist of the caliber of Mme. Matzenauer could have perhaps found many American songs which would have been more suited to the beauties and natural range of her voice. However, the audience seemed to like them, and after all that is the first requisite of the concert artist. Taking the concert as a whole, it proved to be one of the most satisfactory offered so far this season.
Frank LaForge was the accompanist, and as always created (Continued on page 36)
however, of the third group was the Bachelet Chere Nuit, which was given a lovely rendition. This was followed by Si Mes Vers Avaient des Ailes (Hahn), Langs and a (Grieg), Vaggvisa (Merikanto), and Langt i fjerran hors eko svara (Dannström). In the English songs that closed the program, Mme. Kaufmann revealed a fine intelligible diction that was indeed pleasant to the ear.
Mme. Kaufmann possesses a voice of very agreeable quality, light but charming, which she uses with taste. Her singing is marked by the ease and freedom of her top notes, which are especially well controlled. In her phrasing and general style, the singer is also not lacking. She offered much of interest.
In commenting upon her singing, the critic of the American said: “Minna Kaufmann proved her powers as a linguist as well as a vocalist. Her performance required a knowledge of at least six languages and as many schools of composition.” The reviewer for the Herald found her “most effective in the lieder by Brahms and Schubert, which were much enjoyed by the audience,” an opinion that was seconded by the Times: “The joy she took in singing the lieder she imparted to the audience, which seemed to take as much joy in listening.” The other numbers on her program were: Auf dem Wasser zu singen, and Heiden Röslein (Schubert) ; Am Sonntag Morgen and Ständchen (Brahms) ; Waldseligkeit and Ständchen (Strauss) ; Midsummer Lullaby (MacDowell) ; Elf and Fairy (Densmore) ; Do Not Go, My Love (Hageman), and Homage to Spring (Mac-Fadyen).
Coenraad V. Bos at the piano gave the singer his splendid support.
CITY SYMPHONY: DARIUS MILHAUD’S DEBUT
For the last two or three years one has heard considerable of the French “Group de Six,” which, by the way, is now a “Group de Cinq,” for somebody dropped out. To be exact, however, it would not make very much difference if four more should drop out, for the energetic Darius Milhaud is energetic enough for a dozen composers—not to mention six. Mr. Milhaud was born at Aix en Provence on September 4, 1892. Portuguese by descent, one hears, and Hebrew by race, he tosses off works in large form with even more facility than the late Max Reger. He is also a splendid salesman. He sold himself to the City Symphony Orchestra and came over here for his first professional visit, appearing at the concerts given on Wednesday afternoon, January 17, at Town Hall, and Saturday evening, January 20, at Carnegie Hall.
It had been planned to begin the program with the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, but lack of opportunity for rehearsal, due to Conductor Foch’s illness, caused the substitution of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Scheherazade. This was hard luck for Mr. Milhaud since he had to follow so gorgeous and clever a work with his Ballade for piano and orchestra. Mr. Foch conducted. Mr. Milhaud played the piano with a solemnity and earnestness worthy of a better cause. Somewhere, sometime, Mr. Milhaud has been bitten with a tango rhythm. His Orchestral Suite, played here last year by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had a tango in it; it is said that his piano pieces include a very good tango; and this so-called Ballade was principally in tango rhythm.
Here is what Mr. Milhaud wrote about his own piece: “The work is in one movement, but has, in reality, five separate parts. The middle section, which contains elaborately developed themes, is preceded and followed by two symmetrical fragments. The Ballad has no program. In my opinion, music has no relation to words, although it
J anuary 2 5, IP 23
ing tone, facile technic, as well as absolutely reliable intonation. He was ably accompanied by Alfred De Vpto.
The New York Times writes: “The passages which demanded fleet fingers and agile bowing were played with skill, but more enjoyable were the slower-moving melodies, which were played with a full tone of deep emotional quality.” The New York Herald states: “Mr. Fabrizio showed that he had been well schooled in finger technic and the general requirements of violin playing.״ The New Yprk Tribune comments: “He is a player of taste and technical capacity, if not remarkable technical finish.״ Grena Ben-nett in the New York American believes: “Mr. Fabrizio has qualities that intrigue the listener and point the way for a career. He has taste and technical skill and although his tone lacked something of warmth and richness, it was not entirely devoid of charm. His reading of_ Beethoven s D major sonata was sincere and unaffected, his sense of pro-portion was artistic, while his placing of accent and empha-sis revealed a commendable dramatic appreciation.”
TUESDAY, JANUARY 16
ELLY NEY
“Stiff” is a mild adjective to apply to the program that Elly Ney presented to her admirers at Carnegie Hall Tuesday afternoon. There was the Brahms C major sonata, op. 1; Beethoven C minor sonata, op. Ill; the Beethoven six variations in F major, Op 34; Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue of Bach, and the Schubert Wanderer Fantasy, op. 15. Except for Bach, these are all items seldom heard; nor are they things for a mixed audience to absorb, but Mme. Ney had a full hall and an audience that listened intently from the beginning to the end and expressed its undoubted pleasure with the heartiest of applause. To the interpretation of Brahms and Beethoven, she brought that thorough musicianship, that quiet command, that deliberate slighting of the artificial for the real which is characteristic of all her playing. (Even Mme. Ney, however, did not convince some of us that Beethoven would not have written passages of the op. Ill otherwise if he had not been stone deaf.) The Wanderer Fantasy was a brilliant and effective close to an afternoon that was unusual in many ways.
ELENA GERHARDT
Manager Daniel Mayer came out on the stage before Elena Gerhardt began her program at Carnegie Hall, Tues-day evening, January 16, to offer excuses for her, saying that she had a cold. As Mr. Mayer is a truthful man, one was compelled to believe him, but hardly a trace of it
showed.	.	,,	_ ’	,.
Three-fourths of the program was typically Gerhardt, with the first group of Franz and Beethoven, the second of Brahms and the fourth of Richard Strauss. For the third group she sang several songs in English, among which there particularly stood out Bainbridge Crist’s exquisite Coloured Stars and the Fairy Tales of the late Erich J. Wolff. There is no possible necessity of telling at this late day how Mme. Gerhardt sings German lieder. There is no singer who surpasses her in this particular branch—few who approach her. To the English songs she brought all the same qualities, singing delightfully, with thorough exhaustion of their possibilities and in the cleanest of English. Miss Gerhart, for those who love the art of lieder singing, is no longer a singer; she is an institution. The applause was commensurate with her deserts.
FLONZALEY QUARTET
At the Flonzaleys last concert, the second of its eighteenth season, a pleasing quartet by Novak gave much enjoyment to whatever members of the audience like light music. Light music is light, even when compressed into the frame of a string quartet; but is jazz, under these circumstances, jazz? It may well be questioned, and certainly this Bohemian composer had no idea that he was writing jazz. He probably never heard of jazz, and the folk songs (if they are folk songs) that he uses are probably Hungarian or Bohemian, although they sound as if they might come from our South, or from Broadway. Of course, they are fixed up along strictly classic lines, as behooves a writer of quartets (he would not get his quartet played if they were not), but in spite of that it was pretty, graceful, amusing music, and everybody had a good time.
Afterwards the Flonzaleys played Haydn and Brahms, and delighted the other half of the audience, the purists and classicists. All of it was beautiful playing. The delicate gradations of tone from loudest to softest without any sacrifice of sonority, the refinement and polish, the rich, ripe interpretations, the force, vigor and speed, the fine building up of climaxes—all of _ these indicated the perfection of the players’ musicianship, the excellence of their training, the care with which the works are rehearsed.
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
It was a Beethoven-Wagner program Conductor Stransky chose for the concert at the Metropolitan January 16, and while the audience in size was not to be compared to the usual Opera House throng, it did not lack in enthusiasm. The Beethoven fifth symphony was presented first and splendidly done, but it was Wagner that seemed to arouse the greatest pleasure. There were five offerings by the latter, namely, Prelude to Die Meistersinger, Prelude to Act III and Shepherd’s Melody from Tristan, March of the Grail-Knights and Bell Scene from Parsifal, •Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Scene from Die Walkiire and the prelude to Act III of Lohengrin.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17
MINNA KAUFMANN
Minna Kaufmann, soprano, well known in New York, was heard in an interesting recital at the Town Hall on Wednesday evening by a large and very responsive audience. In the selection of her program Mme. Kaufmann showed taste and discrimination, using as her first contribution the recitative and aria, Crudele? Ah No! (from Don Juan, Mozart), which she sang with style and effectiveness, in the Schubert, Brahms and Strauss group, Mme Kaufmann rose to great heights of favor, conveying to her hearers her own delight in the lieder. The piece de resistance,
NYIREGYHAZI
A Sensation in California
PIANIST IS A MARVEL
Nyiregyhazi in Recital at Philharmonic Displays Talents of a Master
Los Angeles is not prone to rhapsodize over its musical visitors. It is therefore something more than the ordinary triumph which was accorded the young pianist Nyiregyhazi at Philharmonic Auditorium.
This young man is distinctly a great pianist. He has the proverbial fingers of steel, but clothed in o t est velvet, and the depth of his tone is of constant wonder. The ordinary pryotechnics of piamsm are as nothing to the artist. The program was marked throughout by ovations for the artist and a perfect storm of plaudits at the conclusion of the program.— (Los Angeles Examiner).
BOY PIANO ARTIST WINS LOS ANGELES CROWDS
Young Keyboard Artist Is Called GENIUS: Tonal Power AMAZES-NYIREGYHAZI IS
A NAME TO CONJECTURE WITH.
This relates not merely to pronunciation but to the genius of the bearer of it as an artist of the keyboard. Without hesitancy we call Mr. Nyiregyhazi a genius. And heaven knows it has become a ghb slipshod word in the mouths of the uncouth who unreservedly hail as geniuses all the ill-literati of art who have a mess of talent to peddle.
his audience, yet keeping control
His Art Satisfies.
Mr. Nyiregyhazi has the great gift of losing physical consciousness of of them with his own subconscious mind.
He has self confidence without bombastic assurance; poise without saturated egotism, and great gifts which he distributes modestly and for which he received such high acclaim that he was not allowed to depart, and after the program it became an EVENING OF ENCORES.-(L0i Angeles Evening Express).
NYIREGYHAZI IS SUCCESS IN CONCERT
Among the thrilling experiences of the present musical season I shall set down the piano concert of Nyiregyhazi. He is gloriously youthful and thrillingly alive with the spirit of his youthfulness, even though on the concert platform he is a most reposeful young man. He had a capacity audience. Melody stands out through all his playing rather astonishingly.— (Los Angeles Daily Times).
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