18
February 22, 1923
left a manuscript composition consisting of eighteen variations on an original theme, written for piano, four hands Keisenauer had previously commenced the orchestration of these variations, and Weingartner himself had an opportunity of seeing this orchestration which was subsequently lost. At any rate, it is not fully intelligible whether Weingartners work is not merely an orchestration of Keisenauer s original composition, and if so, whether it makes, in part or in full, use of Reisenauer’s own scor-mg in its present shape, the piece is skilfully and effectively (though rather conservatively) orchestrated, and it possesses commendable qualities. Consisting of no less than eighteen variations and a finale, it is rather too Ion״ to hold attention throughout. Moreover, variations are hardly the musical form suited to interest anyone but the professional musician. To the layman (similar to the cadenzas of the concerto) they are more or less of a bore and not quite unjustifiedly so.
New Works—And New Composers.
Generally speaking, it may be stated that the present season has brought a certain reaction against modernism (Vienna Branch of the International Music Society, please notice!). Tbs is not merely the fault of our public— which is, to be sure, not free from blame in its indifference towards modern works—but of our conductors as well Furtwängler, for instance, who is one of the apostles of modernism in Berlin, in his Vienna concerts sticks to the hackneyed programs of the traveling star conductor, and Schalk and, in particular, Strauss, are no better in this respect. We are doubly indebted, therefore, to conductor
r«PiSfiWhi ‘'׳Ar ■wlniuf ‘!ew life into the fossil Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde by presenting, at that
society s first orchestral concert of the season, the beautiful Poeme de 1 extase of Scriabin. What wonderful wealth of colors the man commands! There you have all the
ihem^leSS I* the, Strauss orchestra, yet a plasticity of thematic workmanship which is Wagnerian in the best sense By conducting the complicated piece from memory Keichwein accomplished a remarkable feat. He is srradu-ally working his way to the front ranks among Vienna’s conductors Rudolf Nil,us, too, is attracting constantly growing attention by h.s subtle art of profram-making
Orrh«frTd TthlS Cha®bef Co״certs with the Philharmonic Orchestra. The rarely heard symphony by E flat by
Stamitz, which he included in his latest program, is a klI?'J; Jhe same program offered, as a novelty, ich Korngold s Songs of Farewell in the new orchestral se t”S’ Wlth the composer at the desk. These songs are rather too insignificant and imitative to warrant so ambi-aH. orchestral apparatus. They , do not count among young Korngold s happiest conceptions.
Hans Gal, a young Viennese composer and Korngold’s senior by just a few years (his new opera, The Holy Duck, is almost ready for production at Düsseldorf) was
nParrdArtVWO־CT intermezzos from his comic opera, Der Arzt der Sobeide; they are sparkling in rhythm and effective in their parodistic colors. Karl Futterer, from Switzerlancl, had a hearing for his variations called Hans £, Ä apd ■for s£lectl°ns from his comic opera, Don ?_d Grünen Hosen, which were so light of weight as to be somewhat out of place in a serious concert More than usual attention was attracted by a young and heretofore entirely !unknown Viennese composer named
^rT\Sal״Tfer Wlth a Concert Piece for trumpet and orchestra and an overture to a mediaeval play, Der Acker-
Bon" d/r Tod'u ?•is music is brimful with imagination and ideas, and his treatment of the orchestra is excellent. We are anxious to hear more from him soon Rudolph Reuter’s Success.
Kathleen McQuitty, from London, has once more suc-
fielH	nma?cuIlIl? supremacy in the pianistic
field She did the Brahms-Paganmi Variations splendidly, besides making a bold and not entirely convincing bid for two English composers named Colin Taylor and Marma-
:T	Two Plan° P;eces by the latter—a scherzo
and an intermezzo, both played from manuscript—were nice well-behaving music on the Mendelssohn order, but
Saionmusik1*6’ ^1Slng	was even less than that:
A sensation was caused by the two concerts of Alexander Brailowsky, a Russian pianist heretofore unknown to Vienna. He is said to be a Leschetizky pupil, and well he might be. His technic is stupendous, and his musician-ship beyond question. Whether he plays Mozart, Chopin Schumann, or Moussorgsky—there is always the same strong individuality and the same unfailing sense of style Vienna was quick to recognize his eminent gifts, and equally quick to appreciate the consummate art of Rudolph Reuter, the American pianist. Reuter’s debut program ranging from Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms to Granados, Busoni, Dohnanyi and Korngold, was in itself a recommendation, and the way in which he handled the Schumann Symphonic Etudes won for Reuter the admiration of his audience from the outset. His treatment of the modern works was perhaps even more remarkable and a hne little impressionist study. The Fountain of
favor■3 P°la־ by tHe lat£ ChadeS ^ Griffe־, found much
Rudolph Polk Is Liked.
The violinistic honors of the week fell to Rudolph Polk who is well remembered here from his last year’s concerts’ i״״wed Jeal American enterprising spirit by breaking the dull routine of the German specimen programs. There
________________(Continued on Page 58).
MUSICAL COURIER
DEPLORABLE POLITICAL SITUATION LEAVES
A DEEP IMPRINT ON VIENNA’S MUSIC
Vienna Branch of the International Society for New Music Inactive Owing to Petty Jealousies and Cliques—The Nationalist Wave—And Pan-Germanism-A Bach Premiere-Braunfel’s New Work—Weingartner’s New Bid for Composer’s Fame—New Works and New Composers—Rudolph Reuter and Rudolph
Polk Well Liked
Apparently, while composing it, Wagner must have been under the impression that “anything was good enough for the \ ankees. This Wagner piece was quite in keeping witn the character of the whole concert which, while enlisting the services of four soloists and as many orchestras, must be recorded as one of the saddest freaks of the year.
Braunfel’s New Work.
The past weeks have been in the nature of a Bruno Walter Festival, in connection with this conductor’s farewell prior to his American tour. There is no parallel for his Vienna popularity. Walter is indeed unsurpassed as a_ conductor of Mahler, but his local admirers do not differentiated. They follow him unconditionally in any case. He is nothing if not versatile. During the last few weeks we heard from him a performance of the Verdi Requiem (which was, perhaps, too “German” and not sufficiently operatic in his interpretation), several Mahler symphonies, and the new Te Deum by Walter Braunfels. At the same time he showed himself as an accomplished pianist in a sonata evening with Arnold Rosé and in a song recital with Franz Steiner. His treatment of the piano is decidedly “impressionistic.” Technically he is by no means flawless, but his playing is wonderfully “plastic.”
The supreme effort of the season, as far as Walter is concerned, and, at the same time, his last farewell prior to his departure, was his performance of the Braunfels Te Deum. This eagerly anticipated work marks an in-
VICTOR
GOLIBART
TENOR
His voice is trained to the last degree of art and his singing is akin to perfection.
Richmond (Va.) Times
Towles Photo DisP<*ch.
THE L. D. BOGUE CONCERT MANAGEMENT 130 West 42nd Street, New York
teres ting attempt at^ carrying new, modern tendencies into church music. It is, for the most, harmonically simple. There are many unisono passages and little contrapuntal treatment. In its severe simplicity the Te Deum resembles the ascetic methods of a Pfitzner mingled with the naiveté of a Mahler. Above all, it is of a sincerity and loftiness of purpose which compels admiration. Its demands on the performers are tremendous, especially as regards vocal range, but all requirements were ideally met by the performance. Walter conducted with apparent enthusiasm, and both chorus and orchestra were excellent. The success of the new work was beyond expectations, and though a large portion of the applause may have been in the nature of an au revoir for Walter, there was still plenty of it left for composer Braunfels who was present personally, and, to an equal degree, for' Frau Merz-Thunner, a truly phenomenal soprano who made her first Vienna appearance on this occasion and who was immediately acclaimed as a star of the first order.
Weingartner’s New Bid por Composer’s Fame.
The Philharmonic series this season is particularly dull in its programs. There are practically no novelties, and the programs are of the familiar sort. The third concert in the series made a pleasant exception, offering as it did the dazzling Firework by Stravinsky (who, unless memory fails, has heretofore been completely ignored by our principal orchestral organization) and the exotically charming and colorful Dance Rhapsody by Frederick Delius (also, if I remember rightly, a newcomer on the Philharmonic programs). Two weeks later Weingartner made another of his heretofore ill-fated bids for recognition as a composer with his very latest work, Variations on a Theme of Alfred Reisenauer. The authorship of this composition is not very clear; according to Weingartner’s own statement, it seems that Alfred Reisenauer (more famous as a pianist of the Liszt school than as a composer) at the time of his death
Vienna, January 18.—It is with a certain sad and discouraged feeling that Vienna musicians learn, from the Musical Courier and other sources, of the great energy and enthusiasm displayed by the various national branches of. the International Society for New Music. They are doing big things in London and in Berlin as well. While all this is going on, the Vienna group of this society, which indeed originated from this very city, is standing aside and watching others work. The reason, of course, is simple: petty jealousies and cliques—the traditional Vienna disease. The big ones, like Schönberg and Marx, are keeping aloof, and the minor gods are squabbling over more or less formal questions. The ultra-moderns resent the more conservative ones, and the Melodists refuse to collaborate with the Atonalists. All of which accounts for the fact that the Vienna group of the International Society for New Music so far has done no productive work whatever.
The Nationalist Wave.
All this is more deplorable in view of the present political situation. Nationalism and national hatred are once more triumphant in politics as well as in music. The Pan-Germans are becoming more bold than ever. In Munich they interfered with a concert of. the “Francophile” Swiss Henri Marteau who, for some reason, has come to be regarded as a sort of a French spy. In Vienna, to be sure, Marteau gave his concert without difficulties of any sort (except from _ some of the critics who, like myself, found his renditions of a classic music a strange mixture of Frenchy daintiness and Teuton brutality), but a Jewish composer from Frankfort, named Ernst Toch, who came here to attend the first performance of his string quartet opus 26 (played by the Mairecker-Buxbaum organization), was jeered at in the concert hall by a crowd of chauvinist youths who, without even pretending any understanding of his composition, objected to it merely on racial grounds. There were catcalls and yells, and the affair almost led to a regular fist fight. Surely the composition itself did not in the least justify such an uproar. It is a work of unquestionable talent, but suffering from a mixture of radically modern and classic elements. (A Phantastic Night Music for orchestra by the same composer, by the way, has been accepted for New York performance by Walter Damrosch.) It is neither appallingly modern and daring nor bad enough to evoke antagonism on artistic grounds. But what do Hackenkreuz (an anti-Semitic sign) chauvinists know about music? To them, Schönberg is merely a Jew, the same as Mahler was fifteen years ago. Of living musicians, they dote on Pfitzner. Most likely they never even knew Pfitzner’s name until the day when, in 1917, he composed his unfortunate U Boat music. Since then he has been their hero and, with them, he is a purely political issue and nothing else.
And Pan-Germanism.
To be sure, Pfitzner is a Pan-German. It is, perhaps, his one great fault. There is in him something of the naive enthusiasm and idealism of a former period, a love of the Deutsche Seele which has, surely, very little in common with the Prussian militarism of today. He is a Romantic, and the words he chooses for his vocal compositions are almost unfailingly of the romantic German school. Recently we heard his two Deutsche Gesänge for chorus which fully confirmed the above views. In the same concert, Richard Strauss himself condescended to conduct his Bardengesang for chorus. This is the composition written for the Breslau Sängerfest 1907 and based on impossible verses by Klopstock, and it sounds about as Pan-German as can be. But let no one think for a moment that Strauss really is a Pan-German 1 He is simply talented and (alas!) versatile enough to compose suitable music for every occasion. He may just as well decide some day to compose music to order for a Jewish synagogue, if only the fee meets his demands.
A Bach Premiere.
Which reminds us that music “written to order” is generally a doubtful proposition. We had a sad exhibition of such music the other day when !Wilhelm Kienzl made an unsuccessful attempt to conduct a festival concert on the occasion of the Austrian Composers’ Corporation’s twenty-fifth anniversary. It was a sumptuous affair, and the program was very unusual, opening with a veritable first performance of a Bach concerto for four pianos and stringed orchestra, and winding up with Wagner’s Festival March, composed for the hundredth anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence.	Sandwiched in
between this and the lovely Bach piece with its marvellously beautiful instrumental colors, we heard Beethoven’s Symphonic Tone Painting for two “enemy orchestras” entitled Wellington’s Victory or The Battle of Vittoria which, with all due reverence for its great composer, must be termed trash of the worst order. Nor is the Wagner Festival March suited to add new laurels to its author’s fame. It is a senile and weak composition, replete with memories of The Flying Dutchman and Meistersinger.
MADAME VALERI.
“In examining a student’s voice ano finding it at fault, I always *u99e®t to him to consult There is no voice defect that can escape her notice and that cannot be corrected by her abilitv tremolo included, when bad training has not gone so far as to cause looseness in the vocal chords.”
381 WEST END AVE., Entrance on 78th St.
BONCI
Mezzo Soprano
410 Knabe Building New York
CLAIR EUGENIA SMITH