35
MUSICAL COURIER
March 8, 1928
What a New York Critic Thinks of
T5he MINNEAPOLIS
Symphony Orchestra
HENRI YERBRUGGHEN, Conductor
From The New York World, Feb. 14, 1923.
The Minneapolis Orchestra
■—	By Deems Taylor ————————————
Deems Taylor, music critic of The World, has been in the Middle West gaining “personal impressions of what is being done to present the best in music throughout a reasonably large and representative section of the United States.”
The Minneapolis Orchestra under Henri Verbrugghen played in Milwaukee in the face of rather heavy odds. In the first place, Milwaukee concert goers are devoted partisans of the Chicago Orchestra, so that the audience, only moderately large, was inclined to be critical. Then, too, the Pabst Theatre, where the concert was given, offered playing conditions that were very far from ideal.
There were no platforms on the stage, so that the whole orchestra had to sit on the floor level, with the result that proper tone balance was extremely difficult.
Moreover, the stage itself was so narrow and deep that the sound of the orchestra had no focal point; the sonority of the instruments was seriously affected and the various choirs were frequently as isolated in effect as though they had been playing out of doors.
Under the circumstances, the performance that Mr. V erbrugghen and his men managed to give was really extraordinary and their evening was nothing less than a triumph. The audience that had clapped briefly and politely when the conductor first appeared, showed signs of startled appreciation after the “Freischuetz” overture. The final chord of the Beethoven fifth symphony was the signal for a storm of applause that was not stilled until Mr. Verbrugghen, after his fourth recall, had summoned his men to their feet to share the tribute.
Despite the handicap of bad acoustics, it was soon evident that Minneapolis has a fine orchestra, excellent alike in material and playing qualities. The strings have unusual richness and solidity of tone and the woodwind and horns are good and well blended. The brasses—the trumpets in particular—showed occasional tendencies to roughness, and once or twice their intonation was open to argument, but the deadness of the hall may have had something to do with that.
The ensemble is exceptionally good, and the men play with the indescribable “willing” quality that comes only of perfect confidence in one another and faith in their conductor. Mr. Verbrugghen’s seating arrangement for the orchestra is unconventional, as the violas alone divide the first and second violins, the cellos sitting at the left of the stage, behind the first fiddles. This plan puts the three upper string choirs together, and it sounded effective. Ordinarily the Minneapolis basses stand just beyond the cellos, toward the back; but last night’s stage was far too narrow to allow of that arrangement, and the basses had to be banished to the orchestral suburbs off near the horizon.
Mr. Verbrugghen made an immediate and profound impression on his hearers. Everything he does is the projection of a strongly individual personality. His readings are distinguished not only by their impressively structural, almost architectural quality, but by a clarity and sharp definiteness that bespeak a clear intellect and a strong will.
He made the Weber overture a miniature drama—which, after all, it is—boldly drawn and full of sharp contrasts, beginning with a wonderful crescendo on the long, mysterious opening notes that foreshadowed the mood of the great horn quartet so exactly that its magic was doubled when it did arrive. His technical control of the orchestra, in this and the other works, was extraordinary. He obtains a finish and subtlety of phrasing from the woodwinds that many a string choir might envy, and paints with a wide range of tone color and uncommon surety and decisiveness of line. His attacks, in the fortes, are like pistol shots.
His reading of the fifth symphony was equally bold in outline and powerful in its imaginative qualities, with something Greek about the steady, relentless march of its events. Verbrugghen is a famous Beethoven conductor, and after hearing him it is easy to see why. His musical vision has a breadth and sculptural quality that make him peculiarly fitted to interpret Beethoven’s vast and deceptive simplicity. His conceptions, however unconventional, carry conviction because they so obviously spring from deep sympathy and understanding.
The opening movements of the fifth were particularly fine—the first, planned with an extraordinary unity and such inevitability of direction that the close was predicted in the opening phrases; the second, gracious and flexible in line, with the beautiful ’cello passages swaying and drooping like great flowers.
Arthur Shattuck was the soloist, playing the Saint-Saëns fifth piano concerto. He gave it an excellent, incisive performance, aided and abetted by Mr. Verbrugghen’s brilliant accompaniment. The first movement of the work has interesting things to say, and all of it is effective, but only the virtues of the performance made the last two movements palatable. Saint-Saëns wrote it in Egypt, and he is said to have tried to embody in it something of the mood and color of the Orient. He gives little impression of having succeeded— if, indeed, he really tried. The music heard last night was disconcerting proof of the fact that wherever a man may journey he takes himself with him. There were a few Oriental patches, like foreign labels on a suit case; the rest was Saint-Saëns in a garrulous mood.
The other members on the program included Ravel’s orchestral transcription of his “Pavane pour une Infante Defunte,” a thumbnail sketch of gentle melancholy, delicately and wistfully scored, and two Wagner excerpts, the finale from “Rheingold” and the “Walkuerenritt.” The acoustics laid clammy hands on the last two, but even so they had fire and titanic vitality. The audience by this time was clamantly enthusiastic and as this hearer left was apparently in no hurry to go home.
© Lee Brothers, Minneapolis
HENRI VERBRUGGHEN
NOW BOOKING
Tour] of the East and South in the Spring of 1924
For Terms and Dates, address DANIEL MAYER, Aeolian Hall, New York
Or 405 Auditorium Building, Minneapolis