MUSICAL COURIER
9
It is something to be a German these days, in Berlin, I tell you!
Ernst Krenek, born and bred in Vienna, is not as Czech as his name. Though he is supposed to draw a stipend from the culture-propagating Government of Prague, he has a higher standard of artistic ethics. He is abstract where the other is circumstantial. He seeks to create, not in the easiest way but the hardest. His expression, therefore, is tortuous and merely lets you guess what is behind it. His manner is by no means facile and he has much to learn; but his fanatic asceticism is admirable in one so young. He is neither sentimental nor banal, yet his keyless polyphony is free from the pessimism of Schonberg. Neither impressionism nor Russian dynamics have seduced him. This in itself is remarkable. Krenek, of course, had the lesser success of the evening. An idealist. .The performance was exemplary in every way, the conductor being that valiant champion of modernity, Herman Scherchen, who brought with him a selected ensemble from the Frankfort Opera Orchestra. The soloist was Tiny Debiiser, who created the Hindemith song cycle in Donaueschingen last summer. As a vocal interpreter and singing musician she stands virtually alone among the younger generation in Germany.
Straussian Aftermath.
An idealist, too, is Max Trapp, without a doubt, whose second symphony, op. 15, was given a first hearing by Furtwängler in the seventh Philharmonic concert a few nights ago. But what different results the idealism of this young man brings to light. Hear him, in his own program notes j “I strive for melody. I believe that, though much disdained in our time, it must come to honor again, that it will be the savior from the chaos and the storms of our time.” Perhaps he is right, but why leave to one element of music the job of saving the noble art? The argument would be more convincing if the melodic contours of this symphony were not so reminiscent of Bruckner and Strauss. How can a man avow his dependencies so frankly? Is this what he means by “honesty,” when he says “honesty is what we need?” According to him “it’s less important to say something ‘absolutely new’ in every measure,” and with this pious conviction he blazes merrily ahead with Straussian chord gymnastics and spins his melodic threads according to the accepted neo-romantic recipe, and in all this exhibits an admirable ability, an intense and natural musicality and many sympathetic personal traits.
I have dwelt on this symphony because Trapp is the typical case of the talented German musician whose creative instincts it is a pity to see stifled in this sort of “Epi-gonentum.” His scherzo, inspired by Verhaeren’s poem, November Wind, shows a keen fantasy and a marvelously deft hand at tonal imagery. Trapp should be an excellent composer of incidental music, a form of musical craftsmanship that is usually left to lesser hands. His willingness to tread in accustomed paths, sincere as it is, is not a creative instinct, in the highest sense. Trapp, formerly a student, now a teacher at the Berlin Hochschule, is thirty-six years of age, and has a respectable list of works to his credit.
Furtwangler’s difficulty in finding the significant German novelties which are to mark the trend of the Philharmonic concerts under his regime, is accentuated by this choice— a heritage, by the way, from Nikisch’s last days. His conducting of the work was admirable in every way; but the real triumph of the evening was his finely differentiated, plastic and whimsical,reading of a genuine Strauss—the immortal Till. Between these two Prof. Carl Flesch delighted the capacity audience with his authentic playing of Beethoven’s violin concerto.
London Symphony in Berlin.
One of the few free-lance German symphony conductors still in the ring is Ignatz Waghalter of the Deutsches Opern-haus in Charlottenberg (for though politically a Pole, he is economically a German, and his economic countrymen are falling by the wayside, one by one). Waghalter even has (Continued on page 48)
March 1,1923	M U S I C A L C O U RIE R
BERLIN SHOWS SIGNS OF DISCOURAGEMENT
AS COUNTRY’S RESTLESSNESS MAKES ITSELF FELT
Existing Conditions Leave Their Imprint Everywhere, Music Suffers, Too—Straussian Aftermath—The Symphony of the Thousand—Idealism and—Idealism—Russian Element Continues Strong—Enter Czechoslovakia
cycle, Die junge Magd, between. That such a program would draw a capacity audience—and a paying one—after all shows that ideals still flourish in such times as these.
All three of these works had their baptism at the Donaueschingen festival last summer and were discussed by your correspondent then. The strongest impression, even on re-hearing, was left by the song-cycle (accompanied by strings, flute and clarinet) which betokens a strong dra-
AN IMPRESSION OF WILHELM FURTWÄNGLER.
Drawn for the Musical Courier ־by Marie Wetzel.
matic talent and a power of delineation and characterization in accordance with a poetic outline.
When it comes to abstract invention, however, Hindemuth, a genuine German Musikant, who has grown up in the ranks of an opera orchestra, is less happy and none too fastidious in his choice. He is a musician who can “realize” any effect he wants, make anything sound, combine any musical ideas whatever. But in the choice of these ideas he lacks taste.
There is something distinctly live and vital in his Kam-mermusik No. 1, played at this International Society concert, but the methods by which he achieves this liveliness are dangerously reminiscent of Stravinsky. He lapses as readily into German sentimentality a little later, which is something that certainly could not happen to Stravinsky. The trumpet citation of a well known Berlin foxtrot _ (cp you imagine it?) in the last movement is merciless in its intentional banality. On repetition it hurts. To my surprise, there was immense applause and very, oh! very little protest. Even the senior critics were favorable, on the whole.
Teacher oí Singers
I go to him as I would to a doctor.”
Reinald Werrenrath
(lOth consecutive year)
Berlin, February 3—After Paris and London, Berlin presents a mournful air these days. There is a feeling of discouragement, of restless uncertainty on every hand. The French invasion-of the Ruhr, while it has not materially affected the individual in the rest of Germany, nevertheless casts a gloom on everything, and the reading of the daily newspaper, as one-sided and argumentative as in the darkest days of the war, is not calculated to raise spirits at the end of a toilsome day.
Everywhere the eye meets evidences of the new despair, the new unrest. “People’s Sacrifice,” appeals to end for the “People in Need” are posted in public places. The mid- . winter gloom of Berlin seems deepened by the restrictions of night traffic and (public) amusements, and the theater-goer must hurry, as in wartimes, to catch the last car home. From Bavaria comes news of renewed unrest and sinister plots; and youthful minds, fed on dangerous underground propaganda, are full of fantastic schemes of heroic vengeance. . . .
Pitiful is the fact that artists—musicians—are inoculated with this poison to some extent. The suppression of foreign works, such as Carmen and Tschaikowsky’s Pathétique, are grotesque symptoms of this ; the loosening of liberal principles and international sympathy in young and forward-looking men are a more serious sign. The economic factor is, of course, not to be overlooked, though, curiously enough, it is less discussed than a year ago. _ Returning to Germany to-day I pay in thousands what I paid in hundreds two weeks before. The bottom has dropped out of things ; the mark as factor has virtually disappeared. To-day it is the “national index”—the scale of the cost of living calculated on the gold basis of 1914—that counts. Salaries rise automatically with this figure; the wage dispute is settled for the time.
But there are exceptions to this rule, and one of these is music. The pitiful state in which music finds itself in Germany, in comparison with other professions, is illustrated by the fact that the Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin’s leading concert body, though it calculates its charges on the index basis, i. e., in accordance with the cost of living as compared with pre-war, demands only one-half of the resulting prices from foreigners and only one-fifth (!) from Germans. In other words it is content to earn somewhere between a half and a fifth of what was earned before the war, when its summers were taken care of by a well-paying foreign engagement, while now the summer is a blank. _
The reason is, obviously, the price of tickets. Music in Germany is a necessity ; but it is a necessity largely to the middle-class, which is hardest hit by the economic collapse. Whether the extent of this subsidy—for a parquet seat at 1,000 marks (less than three cents) certainly comprises a subsidy to the buyer—is justified, I am at a loss to say. Certain it is that even with the low wages of the musicians, concerts never pay those that give them. And yet the concert agencies flourish. . . . The foreigner is their savior in distress.
The foreign musician now gives the majority of concerts in Berlin; the number of these concerts dwindling visibly since the latest turn in events. Every Berlin concert means a sacrifice for the sake of ideals or vanity; and even the vanity of musicians must, it seems, be satisfied eventually.
As for ideals, they are still worshipped by little bands of the faithful, such as the “Melos” society, which is bringing Béla Bartok to Berlin for a whole “Bartok Week,” and the German section of the International, which gave its third concert, devoted to the young Germans, on the day of my return. The program consisted of chamber symphonies by Ernst Krenek and Paul Hindemith, with the latter’s song-
Five Weeks -	-	־	June 25-August 4
Teachers Course Chicago Musical College
Percy Rector Stephens