March 1, 1923
48
MUSICAL COURIER
ST. DENIS-SHAWN TOUR CONTINUES ON ITS HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL WAY
Portland, Me.; Toledo, 0.; Dayton, 0.; Utica, N. Y.; Atchison, Kans.; Milwaukee, Chicago, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pottsville, Meadville, Detroit, Champaign, Houston and Galveston.
Next season’s repertory promises to be even more attractive than the programs given this year. One of the spectacular numbers will be a new Hopi Indian ballet fashioned by Mr. Shawn from Indian legends. The music for this is now being composed by Charles W. Cadman. This season Miss St. Denis disclosed a new phase of her art by giving Spanish Dances, a departure from the dances of the Orient with which she has been almost exclusively associated heretofore. This section of the program has proved to be so popular that Miss St. Denis and Mr. Shawn will sail for Spain in April in order to gather new material and costumes for next fall. It will be a hurried trip as they will return in June to take up the work of the summer session of the Denishawn School at Mariarden, their country place at Peterboro, N. H. The ambitious plans already outlined for next season will call for a considerable increase in the personnel of the company, the new members of which will be drawn from the classes of the Denishawn Schools now conducted in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and elsewhere.
D. C.; Rock Hill, Columbia and Greenville, S. C.; Atlantic, Columbia, Gainesville, Savannah, and Macon, Ga.; Orlando, Fla,; Waco, Austin, Beaumont, Houston, Tex.; Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and Selma, Ala.; Charleston, S. C.; Bennets-ville, Rocky Mount, Greensboro, Asheville, Raleigh, Salisbury, N. C.; Charlotte, Lynchburg, Va.; Hartford and Waterbury, Conn.
Cities yet to be visited before the tour ends in April are: Montreal, Hamilton, Can.; Niagara Falls, N. Y.; Youngstown, Columbus, Findlay, O.; Detroit, Mich.; Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Appleton, Green Bay, Wausau, Wis.; St. Paul, Minneapolis, Des Moines; Marshalltown, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, la., and Chicago.
Next Season to Be Still Busier.
Daniel Mayer, who is directing Miss St. Denis, Mr. Shawn and their company, reports that the demand for the attraction for next season is even greater than it was this past one and leading managers, who booked one performance this year are taking two next season. Among those who have already signed for two performances are James E. Furlong, of Rochester; Mrs. Franklin B. Sanders, of Cleveland; Elizabeth Cueny, of St. Louis; W. A. Fritschy, of Kansas City, and James A. Bortz, of Pittsburgh. Other cities already booked include Lancaster, Pa.; Lowell, Mass.;
Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and the Denishawn Dancers returned to New York for another performance at Town Hall on Tuesday evening, February 27, their fourth appearance here during the current season. Since they opened on October 3, the company has_ been appearing nightly and has covered practically all the important cities in the East, Middle West, South and Southwest, including the following: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Lewistown, Shamokin, Sunbury, Pottsville, Newcastle, and Erie and Altoona, Pa.; Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore; Saginaw, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Mich.; Milwaukee, Ripon, Madison, Wis.; St. Joseph, St. Louis, Kansas City, Joplin, Cape Girardeau, Mo.; Salina, Concordia, Hutchinson, Wichita, Kans.; Muskogee, Ponca City, Oklahoma City, Okla.; Indianapolis, Fort Smith, Pine Bluff, Ark.; Jackson, Meridian, Vicksburg, Miss.; Memphis, Nashville, Tenn.; Lexington, Louisville, Ky.; Chicago, Peoria, Rockford, Aurora, Springfield, 111.; Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Cal.; Omaha, Neb.; Sioux Falls, S. D.; Davenport, Keokuk, la.; Cleveland, Akron, Springfield, Elyria, Sandusky, Toledo, and Canton, Ohio; Utica, Binghamton, Rochester, Poughkeepsie, Buffalo, N. Y.; London, Can.; Rutland, Burlington, Vt.; Manchester, N. H.; New London, Conn.; Boston, Lowell, Worcester, Pittsfield, Mass.; Portland, Me.; Washington,
RUTH ST. DENIS, TED SHAWN AND THE DENISHAAVN DANCERS IN CHARLESTON.
(Left) Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and Impresario Maud Gibbon of Charleston. Miss Gibbon greeted the dancers with the news of a sold-out house for their performance there recently, under her management. The photograph was taken at the Villa Margherita, where Miss St. Denis and Mr. Shawn stayed while in Charleston. (Right) Miss St. Denis, Ted Shawn and the Denishawn Dancers in Charleston, S. C. The company includes: Louis Horst, pianist-conductor ; J. Froling, violinist; A. Scalzi, flutist; P. Kleyneitherg, cellist; Martha Graham, Betty May, Pearl Wheeler, Julia Bennett, Lenore Scheffer, May Lynn and Louise Brooks, dancers; Betty Davis, wardrobe; Helen Jane Margeson, secretary; Walter Burke, treasurer; Robert Gorham and Charles Weidman, dancers; Sidney Winton, Edward Went and Frank Murphy, stage crew. (Photo by Howard Jacobs.)
Bocklin suite, one of the last works of that composer, showing the influence of French impressionism unmistakably. Considering Reger’s premature death (he died at forty-three), there is no telling what this indicated change of style might have resulted in. Abendroth’s performance did not rise above the level of workman-like intelligence. In contradistinction to Furtwängler he has not been able to win the undivided favor of the Berlin public, and while he has been definitely engaged for the balance of the present season, it is very doubtful whether he will continue in the next.
Russian Element Continues Strong.
Idealism and opportunism is mixed also in the various endeavors of the Russian artists’ colony in Berlin. That colony is now so strong that Berlin must surely be counted as one of the leading centers of Russian music. Nicolas Medtner was the first of Soviet Russia’s composers to emerge, and he has now become an integral part of German music life. In a recent concert of his compositions we heard his violin sonata, a piano sonata, and a whole series of songs, and in a piano recital by Medtner himself, who is a master-pianist of extraordinary faculties, some of the Fairy Tales for piano.
Medtner is not one of the propagators of revolutionary ideas in art. He is content with working conscientiously in a field ploughed ,by others. Yet he does his labor so well, so cleanly, so modestly and sincerely that one must esteem him highly. And in all his work the personal note is uppermost; an imitator he is not. The violin sonata especially is a work worth hearing and studying: the Brahms elegiac mood, translated into the Russian idiom and uttered with an accent so genuinely characteristic that it becomes convincing. Medtner is especially happy in his use of the dance forms, which he treats with a variety of expression, and with ■much refinement of taste. Lea Luboschitz was his successful partner in the violin sonata, while Anna Jan-
ments of genuine spiritual elevation. But it showed up, also, the manifold weaknesses of the work, in the stretches where inspiration ran low and the degree of banality exceeds the bounds of real Volkstümlichkeit.
The religious fanaticism which carries usually the conducting Mahlerites beyond their natural abilities was not in evidence, probably because of Unger’s excessive preoccupation with the purely intellectual endeavor of holding the forces together and achieving the desired effects. Nevertheless, it must be recorded that the performances, sold out to the last inch of standing room, were materially successful and will shortly be repeated to satisfy the demand for this musical sensation.
Idealism and—Idealism.
There is no doubt that in all the activities I have mentioned there is a strong element of idealism, which as I pointed out means more than the usual sacrifice in these difficult times. But there is, in such enterprises as this last also a good deal of that other driving force: opportunism. Novelties, unusual offerings, are often made for the sake of achieving that sensation and publicity which cannot be reached by ordinary means at a time when the odds are against honest endeavor of all kinds. It is difficult to draw the line; but the deciding factor to my mind must be the fitness of the artist for the task before him. If there is awaiting performance a new work not yet heard in a community, there ought to be, in the interest of the composer, a way of choosing the performer who by ability and conviction is the logical man. The readiness of certain obscure artists to do the new thing is certainly as dangerous as the unwillingness of the accomplished masters to deviate from the traditional road.
Though here, too, idealism is not always absent. It is a kind of idealism, no doubt, that keeps Hermann Abend-roth, conductor of the symphony concerts at the Opera House, on the beaten path. As a slight concession he conducted, at the most recent of these concerts, Reger’s
BERLIN
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the courage to produce non-German novelties, and at his second concert recently, conducted R. Vaughan Williams’ London symphony with remarkable understanding and a praiseworthy insistence on beauty of tone (no longer a tacit presumption in Germany, like the good manners of a gentleman).
The Symphony of the Thousand.
The musical évènement in Berlin these days is the production, for the first time here, of Mahler’s gigantic eighth —The Symphony of the Thousand—in the Grosses Schaus-pielhaus. The conductor and moving spirit of this enterprise is the youthful Heinz Unger, known as a Mahler specialist, and the forces employed included four of Berlin’s choral societies, the boys’ choir of the cathedral (Domchor) and the augmented Philharmonic Orchestra. Gertrud Bindernagel, of the Opera, and a half-dozen other local singers, including ׳he formidable Albert Fischer, basso, were the soloists.
It cannot be denied that the young conductor, after months of preparation, commanded this mammoth apparatus satisfactorily, and was thoroughly familiar with the score and its requirements. The huge audiences (some 3,500 people), which twice filled the Reinhardt-Poelzig circus (an architectural nightmare which some one characterized as a frozen catastrophe) gave loud evidence to its respectful acknowledgment, though the explosion of popular enthusiasm which such a superhuman effort ought to evoke—and did evoke in the case of Stokowski’s performances in America and Mengelberg’s in Amsterdam—was missed. The truth is that the performance did not merit it. It was just barely good, and that, alas ; does not suffice for this sometimes inflated work. It managed to give one a thrill now and again by the sheer piling up of sonority, or in mo-
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