15
MUSICAL COURIER
April 19, 1923
From Kansas City (Mo.) Times, Feb. 28,1923
FRIEDMAN THRILLS AGAIN
LOWERED CURTAIN TO QUIET APPLAUSE YESTERDAY,
pollsli Pianist Played a UcmarknMe Program Yesterday Afternoon in the Sltubert /Theater-Back Next Year.
Again it was necessary 'to drop the gray asbestos curtain in the Shubert to quiet the applause ol Ignaz Friedman’s .,audience, and release him from acknowledging it. Yesterday after-neon’s recital was, so far as enthusiasm is concerned, a duplicate of the one last year.
Such recognition as Friedman had is in the face of the faqt that probably no branch of music is more definitely divided into schools and systems and whatnots, each of which has its fanatics and devotees, than piano playing. Friedman simply rides above them all, and leaves the carping ones and the others cowed and convinced and wildly easting about to learn which of their fetishes is in the fewest pieces.
SOME OF THE FEATUBES.
Possibly,; it was Friedman’s repose and command that impressed most yesterday. Perhaps it was his uncanny, feeling for form and restraint in the use of his dynamic power at the keyboard. It might have been his whirlwind technic that swept, the audience from its feet to his. A few were doubtless most impressed by the deliberate ease with which he chose and applied colors to his ‘ numbers, especially the Bach-Busoni chaconne.
It makes very little difference. The great Pole played yesterday even better than last year; it is too dangerous to try to express exactly why and how. The imminence of maudlin gushing makes it that dangerous.
Impressed as it was by the Gluck-Brahms gavotte, the chaconne, and the crystal-clear and shimmering Beethoven opus 90 sonata, the audience was suru doubtedly waiting for the Chopin group to warm up the artist. Most of those in the audience recalled how the pianist who, according to some reviewers, could not play Chopin, recreated him in the last season Kansas City concert. the "half-minute” waltz;
The group included the opus 62, No. 2, nocturne; the B major polonaise; the A‘ flat waltz and these etudes: the ‘‘Butterfly,’’ the etude in thirds (C sharp minor), the “Black Key” etude, the “Revolutionary" and the C major etude. The encores were a mazurka and the “Minute” waltz,. half-minute waltz, someone called it later. The speed of the etudes was either demoniacal or divine, according to the point of view; the poetry of the nocturne warm and ingratiating and the brilliance of the polonaise as fascinating as it was fleeting.
The last group, which began With two very beautiful vignettes of Friedman’s, “Elle Danse’.’ and “Les Reverences," came to a thunderous and thrilling close with the Godowsky arrangement, the melodies from Strauss’s “The Bat.” The Godowsky number served the same purpose this year that the “Tannhäuser” overture did last. It was a summing Up of all the things that had gone before, and a final and superlative׳ effort of dynamics and technic, immense, set not disproportioned.
And yesterday« it was not really final. The applause continued until Friedman returned for the Mendelssohn scherzo; so carefully outlined that it did not occur to one,to think of it as smaller man, the big number that preceded. Then there was the “Campanelja,” played with abandon, if anyone who has tried to deliver the tricky old number can imagine its being played as a carelessly confident school boy might shy a stone through his teacher’s window. After the “Cam-panella” the curtain descended, and a large section of the audience betook itself backstage to rest the palms of their hands, and try to make speech do its duty.
HE IS COMINO BACK.
It will relieve the minds of many to know that Friedman is to return next season, probably for a Sunday afternoon concert, and under Fritschy management. Yesterday’s was the seventh concert of this year’s Fritschy series.
J. A. s.
FRIEDMAN THRILLS AGAIN
—Headline in Kansas City Times
YES HE DID, and FRIEDMAN will thrill Kansas City again next season for Walter A. Fritschy, one of the shrewdest and most cautious concert managers in all the United States, has engaged FRIEDMAN for the third successive season.
WHY DO CRITICS always mention the fact that FRIEDMAN thrills? Why? Because no man, woman, child or critic who ever heard FRIEDMAN play failed to receive the THRILL of a lifetime.
WHY DOES THE AUDIENCE cheer FRIEDMAN to the echo, stand on seats, yell, stamp feet, whistle, demand up to fifteen encores, force the management to lower curtain and put out lights to disperse them? Because Friedman is a THRILLER and (in the words of Max Smith, N. Y. American) “he has beaten every one of his competitors to a frazzle!”
THEN HURRAH FOR FRIEDMAN! He has bankrupted the vocabularies of the musical critics! They have found him “AMAZING,” “ASTOUNDING,” “ASTONISHING,” “BRILLIANT,” “COLOSSAL,” “DAZZLING,” “ENCHANTING,” “EXTRAORDINARY,” “FLAWLESS,” “GIGANTIC,” “IMMENSE,” “IMPOSING,” “MARVELOUS,” “MAGIC,” “MAGNIFICENT,” “OVERWHELMING,” “PRODIGIOUS,” “SENSATIONAL,” “STUPENDOUS,” “STUNNING,” “THRILLING,” “THUNDEROUS,” “TREMENDOUS,” “UNBELIEVABLE,” ETC., ETC. What more could they say?
DON’T HEAR AN ORCHESTRA play the Tannhäuser Overture. Hear FRIEDMAN play it. Hear the Liszt transcription for piano as played by FRIEDMAN to “an audience that went wild with excitement.” The words are those of Max Smith, who further admitted that “IT WAS STUPENDOUS, IT WAS INCREDIBLE what this man accomplished, this TOREADOR AMONG PIANISTS.”
WHO WANTS TO HEAR FRIEDMAN? Everyone with red blood in his veins, everyone who marvels at genius, who thrills at beauty, who loves music, and THAT’S EVERYONE!
NOT EVERY CITY will hear FRIEDMAN next year. He will only be in this country two months—January and February. EUROPE can’t let him go longer, SOUTH AMERICA calls him. So secure vour date NOW.
Steinway Piano Used Now Booking for January, February 1924
Sole Management:
METROPOLITAN MUSICAL BUREAU
33 West 42nd Street New York City