iS
March 1, 1923
laxes, reparations, sanctions, international debts, and eternal conferences.
At one of the concerts in mid-January Ernest Bloch's Three Jewish Poems were the novelties of the afternoon. They are evidently the work of a thorough master of his craft, and their only failing is their excessive length. But, like Wagner’s Siegfried Idyl, they may seem less long when all the themes are familiar to the public. The sensation of the concert, however, was Rosenthal’s performance of Saint-Saëns’ G minor concerto. I do not know whether to admire most the power and brilliancy of the vigorous parts or the incredible delicacy of the fleeting gambols of the gnomes. Clearness and speed had equal rights, and no technical obstacles ever disturbed the irresistible rhythms. As usual, the audience shouted and stormed and applauded until it was tired. Later on in the afternoon Rosenthal played some dainty old-fashioned pieces of Field, and then dashed into Liszt’s Spanish rhapsody, through the mazes of which he had interwoven a few twenty-five finger exercises just to give his unoccupied fingers something to do while he was toying with Liszt’s simple music. By the time he got through his extra numbers his piano was surrounded with many men and women unfamiliar with a concert platform.
Sunday Afternoon Concerts at Albert Hall.
The Sunday afternoon concerts at the Albert Hall continue to attract enormous audiences. Lionel Powell & Holt have falsified the expectations of those who believed that such enormous undertakings would not pay. The problem seems to be to find large audiences in London for the first five evenings of the week. There are by far too many concerts on Saturday afternoon and too few on other days. Evidently the managers study the wishes of the public more than the convenience of the music critics.
Sir Landon Ronald’s selection of compositions by Strauss and Elgar was enough to fill the Albert Hall. A few weeks previously the now popular pianist Pouishnoff made his appearance at the same hall as a conductor of an all Russian program.
My next letter will deal with some of the more eminent soloists in the smaller halls, and also with a few new names and very young artists.	Clarence Lucas.
American Conservatory’s Summer Catalogue
The American Conservatory of Music of !Chicago, of which John J. Hattstaedt is president, has sent out its summer normal session and master school catalogue for its thirty-seventh annual session, which will begin June 25 and conclude August 4. During the summer session a special public school music course of six weeks will be held, with George H. Gartlan, director of music in the public schools of New York City, noted critic, musician, author and educator, who has been re-engaged as guest conductor at its head, offering four courses of fifteen hours each, beginning July 16. Other well known educators will have charge of the public school of music courses, which from all indications will surpass all previous efforts of the American Conservatory, both in variety and number.
An outstanding feature of the summer session of 1923 is again the engagement of great artists and instructors of international reputation to conduct master classes. Josef Lhevinne has been re-engaged and his master classes during the past three seasons presage an attendance of students, professional pianists and teachers from all parts of the country, including also visitors from Canada and Mexico. William S. Brady, who made an extraordinary success in giving private vocal lessons and repertory teachers’ classes which last season attracted many leading teachers and singers from every section of the country, has also been re-engaged.
An announcement extraordinary is the engagement, by the American Conservatory of Music, of Delia Valeri, whose fame as a vocal teacher needs no new emphasis to the readers of this paper. Like Messrs. Lhevinne and Brady, Mme. Valeri will give private instruction and conduct a repertory teachers’ class. Judging by the success Mme. Valeri had hj Chicago three years ago, when she was overwhelmed with applicants for instruction, being then compelled to teach even on Sundays, her return to Chicago when announced caused nothing short of a sensation and singers from every corner of the country have already written to reserve time with this world-renowned mistress of the art of bei canto.
The piano department in the regular course will be headed by Heniot Levy, associate director of the American Conservatory and one of the most distinguished pianists and instructors in this country. Other well known pianists and instructors who are not mentioned here, owing to lack of space, and regular members of the excellent faculty of the school, will be on hand to take care of the large number of students already enrolled for the summer session at the school.
In naming only Karleton Hackett, also associate director of the conservatory, in the vocal department this reporter is unkind in a way to the many good singing teachers that are to be found at the school, but again lack of space precludes further notice in that department. Mr. Hackett is so widely known as a master of the voice, as a brilliant writer and lecturer on all subjects pertaining to the art of singing, that comment here seems superfluous.
Other departments that are not given special mention here and^ which should be included in this review are the organ, violin, theory, harmony, composition, counterpoint, orchestration, violon-cello, harp, flute, cornet, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, dramatic art, expression and oratory dancing and foreign languages, all headed by splendid instructors whose names appear conspicuously in the American Conservatory’s summer catalogue, which will be sent free on application.	j q
Münz Returns from Havana
Mieczyslaw Münz, the Polish pianist, who has already given two New York recitals this season besides appearing as soloist with the New York Symphony Orchestra, on February 7, sailed for Havana and was away until the latter part of the month. While in Cuba he attended to various matters in connection with his musical activities for next season.
Mr. Münz will appear again as soloist with the New York Symphony Orchestra, this time at Cornell University Ithaca, N. Y., on March 13, when he will play the Liszt A׳ major concerto.
MUSICAL COURIER
MIXED SYMPHONIC MENU
Hall Sunday Afternoon Concerts Offer a Variety of Programs Covent Garden
then departed for what Londoners very condescendingly call “the country,” notwithstanding that parts of the so-called country consist of Manchester, which, with the surrounding towns within a radius of fifty miles, has a population of 10,500,000. This “country” has a great appreciation for good music and often speaks with scorn of London. The operas performed are seldom British but the language used is English.
The singers who impressed me most, though I did not hear all on the list for the season, were Florence Austral, Edna Thornton, Robert Radford, Tudor Davies, William Anderson, and the new prima donna, Sarah Fischer, who made her first appearances in Faust and Magic Flute this season. I have been watching the news from Egypt very carefully of late to see if old King Tutankhamen had any slaves or attendants who might have been the ancestors of the peculiar Egyptians who graced the stage in Aida, with bodies of a rich sepia tint and lovely faces of pink and white. At another London theater, once upon a time, I saw a negro with long whiskers of bright green. But of course, if Tutankhamen had no Egyptian National Opera Company to sing in hieroglyphics for him he did not offer any inducement to the biological freaks of Luxor to go on the stage. Whether the mummified cats were respected as vocalists or not I cannot say.
Interesting Works By London Symphony.
The London Symphony Orchestra under various conductors has given several very interesting works so far this year. To me Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony appeared the most important composition given thus far this season. But several very young men, whose musical judgment has not been blunted with as many years of experience as mine has, assure me that the works of Scriabin, Stravinsky, Palmgren, John Ireland, Honneger, Bliss, and Bloch, are worlds ahead of Beethoven now. Readers of this column will therefore please make a note of this. The usual conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra is Albert Coates.
The Philharmonic Concerts.
The same conductor has directed most of the Philharmonic Society’s orchestral concerts this season. Sir Landon Ronald conducted the last one, and Eugene Goossens is to take the place of Toscanini, who was to have conducted the next concert.
Sir Landon is a great admirer of Elgar and he began his concert with the Bach prelude and fugue which Elgar has recently scored for orchestra. It is high time some one should save Elgar , from his friends. No one today questions Elgar’s skill. We all take it for granted that musical science has no secrets for him. I do not for a moment believe that Elgar was responsible for having his name in big type on the right hand side of the program and Bach's name in small type, bracketted, in the middle of the page. When my orchestration of Wagner’s Two Grenadiers was played by this same Philharmonic orchestra to accompany the singing of the late David Bispham in April, 1896, the name of Wagner was in large type at the right hand side of the program and my name was printed small and put in brackets. I took it for granted that I was of lesser musical importance to the Philharmonic Society in 1896 than Wagner was. But in January, 1923, the program of the Philharmonic Society makes Elgar more important than Bach. No practical musician is likely to find anything to marvel at in Elgar’s orchestration of Bach’s organ prelude and fugue. Some years ago when I was actively engaged in music I made the orchestration of seven operas for composers Who did not feel at home in that kind of work. I basely worked for money and neglected the fame of the feat. I had very much greater difficulty in transcribing Tschaikowsky’s Pathetic Symphony for organ for a wealthy amateur of title who alas! also contaminated my hand with vulgar cash. I therefore assert that it is an easy job to arrange a short organ prelude and fugue for orchestra, and it is the silliest twaddle to rave about the equality of Bach and Elgar in their respective labors on this prelude and fugue. The orchestra with its warmth, color, vitality, can never sound like the organ, with its dignity and grandeur. As Herbert Spencer says: “The contrast between the emotion produced by an organ and that produced by an orchestra shows that a large part of this contrast is due to the far greater predominance which the bass has in the organ than in the orchestra.” The Elgar orchestration is now published and it probably will be played from time to time, like Berlioz’s orchestration of Weber’s piano solo, Invitation to the Dance.
At the Philharmonic concert of January 25 in Queen’s Hall the soloist was the American soprano, Marcia Van Dresser, whose singing was received with the greatest satisfaction by the audience. The entire press of London joined in the full chorus of praise for this admirable artist, who has been busy for several months past singing in all the principal cities and towns of Great Britain. The work in which she made her first Philharmonic appearance was a scena, Semele, by an American poetess, set to music for solo voice and orchestra by Arthur Hinton. Some of the critics thought the orchestral accompaniment too loud in places, but of course it is a matter of opinion whether the orchestra should at all times be subordinated to the voice of the soloist. Wagner often made his orchestra continue to pile on the emotional climaxes long after the voice had reached its limits. To ask Wagner to keep his orchestra down to the vocal level would be asking him to limit his emotional expression. Arthur Hinton, some of whose predecessors as conductors of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Orchestra were Spohr, Mendelssohn, Sterndale Bennett, Berlioz, Wagner, Sullivan, conducted the performance of his own work and was recalled to the platform several times. The composition was therefore performed as he probably wanted it performed and those who wish to find fault with it must criticize it as a composition and not for its manner of interpretation.
At Queen’s Hall.
Sir Henry Wood’s orchestral concerts in Queen’s Hall have been well attended this season in spite of rates and
LONDON TREATED TO A
London Symphony, Philharmonic, Queen’s Hall and Albert
—Opera at
London, January 31.—Music has awakened very slowly to life since the new year began, and even now is languishing because the rumors of war and the dislocation of trade in Europe affect the inhabitants of these islands in spite of the encircling moat of water. Great Britain is like an exceedingly sensitive barometer, feeling the slightest variations and depressions in the currents of trade. Other countries, with large agricultural interests—such as France, Germany, the United States—can hardly understand the conditions in an industrial and commercial country like England, which is less than ten per cent, agricultural. If I am rightly informed, the greatest amount of unemployment in America today is to be found in the industrial State of Massachusetts. Great Britain is an enlarged and intensified Massachusetts, without any agricultural neighbors. Consequently, with international trade almost at a standstill, and ships by hundreds lying idle in the harbors, the English have not the money to spare for much orchestral music and the luxuries of grand opera after the plundering tax gatherers have committed their depredations.
Centenary of Edward Jenner’s Death.
January 26 was the centenary of the death of the famous English doctor, Edward Jenner, who discovered vaccination and freed the world of the scourge of smallpox—the terrible disease which nearly carried off Beethoven and left him disfigured for life, after having destroyed the illustrious monarch, Louis XV of France, and laid Queen Elizabeth of England almost at death’s door. As Jenner did not compose a native opera or a patriotic symphony, the British government made him a grant of £30,000.
British National Opera Season.
The British National Opera Company had a brief season , at Covent Garden with varying success, mostly good, and
Mr. Emanuel Ondricek
Director of the
“Ondricek School oi Violin Art”
of New York and Boston
presents his protégée
LITTLE RUTH PIERCE POSSELT
The amazing eight year old American violinist
in a recital
at Carnegie Hall, Tuesday afternoon, March 6th at 3. P.M.
Program
1.	Chaconne...............Vitali
2.	Concerto D Minor—Wieniawski
a.	Allegro Moderato
b.	Romance
c.	A la zingara
3.	a. Hymn to the Sun
Rimsky -Korsakoff-Franko
b.	Spanish Dance Op. 21 .Sarasate
c.	Fantasie on Russian Themes
Wieniawski-E. Ondricek
Management: Haensel & Jones Aeolian Hall, New York, N. Y.