MUSICAL COURIER
14
February 15, 1923
there’s the Lamoureaux, the Conservatoire Orchestra, the Orchestre Pasdeloup, the Orchestre Philharmonique, and the Orchestre de Paris, not to mention those of the Opéra and the Opéra Comique. Golschmann’s is still another combination. As usual, however, quantity is not synonymous with quality, and of the three symphony bands that I heard two were distinctly Wow par. The brass is especially bad and the violins lack body. Even the famous French woodwinds seem to be mostly—in America.
The Colonne Orchestra seems to be still the best. Well balanced and of fine sonority. I heard Gabriel Pierné conduct the Symphonie Fantastique of Berlioz, which I had just heard from Bruno Walter in Berlin. An interesting reading, by this sensitive and thorough French musician, more fantastic—even delicately bizarre—if less powerful and romantic than Walter’s. There is room for two opinions—• and more—on such a tremendous musical fresco, barely indicative of the feverish imagination behind it.
Stokowski’s Triumph.
And I heard Leopold Stokowski as guest conductor of the Pasdeloup, conduct Beethoven’s seventh, excerpts from Gbt-terdâmmerung and diverse early classics. Magnificent is the proper word for his interpretation, though he was obviously handicapped !by a poor orchestra. Paris had been in no wise prepared for the treat in store for it (the same ignorance even of names of German musicians applies to those of Americana bland “je-m’en-fich”-ism on everything outside of Paris reigns) and the hall was by no means filled. But the enthusiasm, kindled by the first piece, grew to fever heat, and the first American conductor to conduct a French orchestra in Paris may boast of a veritable triumph. The bravos resounded through the house. The repetition of the concert was sold out.
Although there are many Americans in Paris just now, comparatively few were at this concert. Mme. Ganna Wal-ska, in light blue velvet and pearls, reigned in the central box; the three charming Duncan girls who recently appeared at this _ theater, sat in another. There was Eleanor Spencer, the pianist, and Loretta Higgins, the young American soprano whose name has been mentioned in connection with the Opéra Comique.
We walked out to the Champs Elysée and drank a toast Chez Francis. A typical Paris evening in winter—mild, with a blue haze over everything. The city of dreams. And the lights ! We walked and walked and walked. The newspapers are full of new troubles, of violence, of war-like threats. The people one meets are troubled and hardened, too, since the war. But Paris is the same. A magic city that retains its fascination through everything. France may be different, but Paris is Paris still. The city of light.
CÉSAR SaERCHINGER.
pings” at the end of a serious symphony concert, proved to me that America has no monopoly on bad taste,
The New Musical Entente.
That the war has drawn as rigid frontiers artistically as it has politically is evident on all sides. Romance culture has reasserted itself in music and the entente cordiale in music clearly has its center in Paris. England is only a platonic׳ member (for after all England is not a romance country), represented here and there by its most francophile musical manifestations. Italy—the new Italy—is in closer touch, and Poland, the new ally, is almost a colony. (Vide Szymanowski and Tansman, one of the most interesting young Poles, who lives in Paris.) The closest rapprochement, however, seems to be that of Spain—musical terra nuova—whose efforts are taken very seriously in Paris. Federigo^Arbos, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in M. Pruniere’s salon, as conducting Spanish music not only in Paris but in the French provinces. Senor Vines, the Spanish pianist, who delighted M. Prunieres’ guests with some interesting arrangements from de Falla’s Three Cornered Hat, is giving piano recitals consisting entirely of Spanish music. There was also present a Chilean composer whose morceaux proved that the French influence is not absent in Spanish America.
While speaking of M. Prunieres’ guests I must not forget to mention a young French composer, Daniel Lazarus by name, whose fantasy for piano, played by himself, showed more emotional depth, as well as imagination, and more
PARIS
Augusta Cottlow Plans MacDowell Concerts
In connection with the recently launched idea of the music department of the Federated Women’s Clubs to institute an annual MacDowell Memorial Week during January, 1924, Augusta Cottlow, long recognized as a leader in featuring the great American composer, announces that she will devote the entire month of January (1924) to programs largely concerned with his works. The MacDowell movement, as outlined by the Federation, is of national scope and every _ type _ of musical organization has been urged to interest itself in special programs embracing Mac-Dowell’s compositions.
This announcement of Miss Cottlow’s should greatly interest the music clubs and particularly the MacDowell .Clubs scattered throughput the country. As a conceded model in MacDowell interpretations, she is quite a logical artist to look to for authoritative readings of the larger works, such as the Norse Sonata, the Eroica, and other too seldom heard masterpieces.
Many people do not know that Miss Cottlow was the first pianist to program MacDowell in Europe and that among the numerous chapters of the MacDowell Colony League in America the only one founded and promoted by an individual is the Augusta Cottlow Chapter.
New York String Quartet Series
The New York String Quartet, in addition to its New York subscription concerts and recital engagements, is giving a series of musicales in the home of the founders, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer. On January 14, the quartet presented the Tschaikowsky E flat minor quartet and the Beethoven G major quartet before an audience which included Prof. Leopold Auer, Mme. Stein, Mrs. F. S. Cool-idge, _ Ethel Leginska, Elly Ney, Willem van Hoogstraten, Edwin Hughes, Scipione Guidi, Louis Svencenski, Felix Salmond, Hugo Kortsehak, Emmerman Stoeber and Messrs. Evans, Warner and Petri, of the London String Quartet.
Theo Karle on Extensive Tour
On his extensive tour of the West, Theo Karle will have Thomas George as his accompanist. Mr. Karle appears as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Walter Henry Rothwell at Pasadena on February IS in an all-Wagner program. On February 18 he sings at Los Angeles, on February 20 at Oroville, Cal., and on February 23 at Willows, Cal. Mr. Karle’s programs for this tour include songs by Giordano, Putti, Gretchaninoff, Hoiks, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Ponchielli, La Forge, Cox, Haile. Curran, Glen and Tschaikowsky.
“She is a singer of rare gifts and attainments, whose work shows serious purpose and fine mentality, as well as the natural endowment of voice.״
The Buffalo (N, Y.) Express said the above about May Peterson, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Co.
Concert Direction: MUSIC LEAGUE OF AMERICA
712-718 Fisk Bldg., New York
After June 1, 1923, under the management of Haensel & Jones Mason A Hamlin Piano Used	Aeolian-Vocalion Records
emancipation from the current French idiom than most of the music I heard in Paris. Evidently a talent of real in-dependence_ and strength. Also let me not forget the unusually fine piano playing (so far as that is possible on an Erard) of Robert Casadesus, brother of Henri, evidently an authentic interpreter of Debussy and Ravel.
The New Opera.
The strongest impression I have had from my short stay, however, has undoubtedly been the hearing of Quand la Cloche Sonnera, the new Bachelet opera, at the Opéra Comique. This work, which Mr. Taylor has appreciatively reviewed in the Musical Courier after its recent première, has the rare quality of being new without being really modern—in the sense of up-to-date. It combines the technic (not the phraseology) of Wagner with some of the plastic simplicity and stark vividness of Moussorgsky, while the treatment of the vocal line is entirely in conformity with the nature of the French language. Dramatically and musically it rises in one uninterrupted line to the final climax, passing through moments of lyric beauty, glowing emotion and a delightful rhythmic charm which borrows its motive from the Russian milieu.
If one were to question the logic of this simple and forceful drama one might ask: would a woman in the spell of the supreme emotional sacrifice her lover’s life for the safety of her country’s soldiers, especially when she herself is the cause of his danger ? “I could not become a traitor,” cries Maroushka as the curtain drops. But what crime is there that has not been committed in the exasperation of love? It is curious, though, how just that ending “gets” the French public of today. Fine as the performance was, with Albert Wolff at the conductor’s desk, the frenetic applause and the hysteric bravos certainly reverberated some of the national sentiment at this moment. Nevertheless, the success of the work is genuine, and deserved. I had the pleasure of congratulating M. Bachelet personally: a slender, refined, typically French figure and a keen intelligent but amiable countenance. About fifty years of age, his hair is already predominantly gray. He has written a great deal, but almost nothing has been heard till today. While the Faurés, the Fourdrains, the psuedo-Ravels have been “the rage.” ’Twas ever thus.
Many Orchestras, But
Paris appears to be a city of orchestras. I never heard of so many orchestras in one town. There’s the Colonne,
(Continued from Page 10).
(pronounce to rhyme with Beaux Arts). Wagner is being played—too much, according to these younger men. One eminent critic refused to listen to Leopold Stokowski because he conducted Beethoven. “Je n’entends pas Beethoven,” said he. There is more of this sort of snobbism in Paris than is good for French art. Of ■the moderns beyond Strauss (who is being played again, here and there) they know Schoenberg. Pierrot lunaire has been given in Paris six times since the war—more than in Germany and Austria together. But the North Germany of today is terra incognita. A cello sonata by Hindemith was played by a cellist who was hard up for a novelty and was found tiresome and vulgar. Voilà!
Music and Perpume.
What one hears is still very much Ravel, Debussy and aftermath—more than I had expected. Even the “Six” are not so far removed from them. The voluptuous melancholy of a Paris afternoon (Debussy’s faun lived in Paris, too) is still the atmosphere of a good deal of the new French music. Two compositions I heard at the Concerts Colonne •—the representative symphonic series of Paris—by Felix Fourdrain and G. Dupont—were typical of this perfumed sweetness. The whole atmosphere at the concerts of the Champs Elysée Theatre is dangerously related to the perfume shops of the Rue de la Paix.
Walking through the Rue de la Paix, by the way, an idle thought struck me. What an idea it would be for the perfume industry of France to inaugurate a sort of parallel to the English ballad concert—the perfume concert—consisting of songs (“romances”) written to the names of the latest perfumes. Nothing more “romantic” surely than these names could be devised in the way of titles. A concert consisting of groups like this would have been a tremendous success :
Chansons fragrantes :
(a)	L’Heure bleue.........................Reynaldo	Hahn
(b)	Apres l’Ondée..........................Maurice	Ravel
(c)	Pour troubler...........................Pierre	Vidal
(d)	Au jardin de mon cure..................C. Chaminade
(e)	Quleques fleurs............................G. Fauré
There might even be some way of projecting the various scents indicated by titles through the hall during the singing of each song. Surely every flapper in Paris—an in America soon after—would be singing her favorite perfume song, and using Guérlain’s or Coty’s famous products at 65 francs an ounce bottle . . .
The New Exotic.
The exotic element has always been strong in French music. It is strong now, but the “exotics” are closer home. Not the languorous intervals of the Orient, but the incisive rhythms of the modern dance are the flavor of the latest art. Milhaud, Auric and those who “are in the movement” (qui font le mouvement) have succumbed to the fascinations of ragtime, and Ravel to the charm of the Viennese waltz. Jean Wiener (pronounced Vyaynair) is giving a whole series of modernist concerts in which he wants to prove that a good “jazze-bande” or a pianolized Johann Strauss waltz is as high art as a Beethoven symphony—or higher. These are the aberrations of “modernism” that in a city of salons (and “Dancings”) are bound to get a crowd, while the more serious aspects of contemporary music are as certain to arouse opposition as they are anywhere else.
Hissing Honegger.
It is so in Berlin and it is so in Paris. A few weeks ago in Berlin I heard the Schoenberg orchestral pieces hissed; a few days ago in Paris a suite by Honegger. Only there was a difference which surprised me; the Germans, who are known to be uncouth in their manners, did the hissing at the end; the Parisians, who have a patent on politeness, started theirs with the first chord they didn’t like and kept it up so that any one whose taste might differ from theirs did not get a chance to hear the piece. It was the most extraordinary demonstration I ever witnessed, and the weirdest to listen to. As it happened, the piece (the last movement of the suite from Dit des Jeux du Monde) delineates rather realistically the swirling ocean devouring a drowning man, and the hissing and booing, rising and falling with the force of the music, added tremendously to the realism. At first I thought it was part of the “show”—an extension of the community sing idea that opens up vast possibilities. . . .
As for the piece itself, I shall not encroach upon the critical duties of our Paris correspondent, but just this last movement—as far as I could hear it—proved to me the unusual talent of this composer, the vigor and plasticity of his ideas, and his fantasy in painting musical backgrounds and moods. He does not shy at dissonances, but seems to write them only from an inner necessity, not at all for the sake of being “ultra-modern,” which he-is certainly not.
This is the only significant new piece of orchestral music that I have heard in Paris, for the other novelties of the Concerts Golschmann—a Hymne Funèbre and a Lamento by Leo Sachs—merely bore out what I said of the French music heard at the Concerts Colonne. L’Heure bleue.
Three innocent little harpsichord pieces by Scarlatti arranged for modern orchestra (muted trumpets, etc.) by Roland-Manuel, and a Scherzo Valse by Chabrier, as “drip-
MADAME VALERI.
“In examining a student’s voice and.finding it at fault, I always suggest to him to consult There is no voice defect that can escape her notice and that cannot be corrected by her ability, tremolo included, when bad training has not gone so far as to cause looseness in the vocal chords ”
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