MUSICAL COURIER
May 3, 1923
36
with satisfaction that he has been selected to conduct the next orchestral concert of the International Society in Berlin.
As a rather superfluous introduction to Mahler’s long and taxing symphony Beethoven’s first piano concerto was played. Since Edwin Fischer, in excellent shape, was its interpreter, however, and showed his art to best advantage, it was enjoyable to listen to, skillfully accompanied by Mr. Wolff.
Enterprising Fag-Enders.
The fag-end recitalists try valiantly to attract the critics’ attention by embracing the modern muse, with more or less success. Thus Claudio Arrau, who earlier in the season has played the entire Well-Tempered Clavichord to a patient audience, combined with Stefan Frenkel in a “modern” sonata evening consisting of the rose-water mystery of Cyril Scott, the neo-classic phantasmagoria of Busoni and the straight Brahmism of Max Reger. Not very exciting. Another pianist, Erwin Bodky, not so finished technically as Arrau, did a Herculean program ranging from Alexander Poglietti (1677) to Bela Bartók and Goossens, whose colorful Nature Poems were thus heard for the first time in Berlin. And Jan Smeterling, a highly talented and accomplished Polish pianist, introduced with great success Karol Szymanowski’s third piano sonata, op. 36, in which the technic of impressionism is applied with bold originality to vivid and plastic musical ideas. Two smaller pieces by a young Spanish composer, M. Infante, interesting bits of Spanish׳ color and rhythm in modern French garb, concluded his program.
The Young Intellectuals.
A whole concert of real novelties, given under the auspices of a periodical called Der Kritiker, sent us home with despair in our hearts. Kurt Weill and Vladimir Vogel, both pupils of Busoni, furnished the major part of the program, but the former’s Divertomento did not divert one from the thought that this type of young intellectual, with his interminable fugues and variations without themes, is leading music up a blind alley, while the latter’s Creation suite did not, during the hours that I spent with it, get beyond the chaos of which the Bible speaks. The only—comparatively —bright spot was a group of songs by Erich-Walter Sternberg, a pupil of Dr. Hugo Leichtentritt, in which a noble lyric mood was maintained by means of a Schoubergian melodic line supported by harmonies essentially romantic.
César Saerchinger.
Fontainebleau School Nears Limit
.Francis Rogers, chairman of the American Committee for the Fontainebleau School of Music, informs the Musical Courier that the enrollment for this summer’s session of the Fontainebleau School of Music is now practically complete. There are no more vacancies in the departments of piano, voice and organ, though there is still room for a small number of well qualified students of composition, violin, cello and harp. When the school opens, June 24, 120 American musicians from about twenty-five different States will be in attendance. The advance guard is already in France; most of the remainder will sail on the steamship France, June 13.
Prof. Phelps Commends Olga Samaroff
Prof. William Lyon Phelps, Lampson professor of literature of Yale, is known in literary circles as one of the foremost critics of America, and in addition to being one of the literary personages of. the day he is also a music lover of rare discrimination. His comments on books are well known, but it is not often that he writes of music. Nevertheless Olga Samaroff’s recent lecture-recital at Yale prompted Prof. Phelps to write to her the following note; “You made such an enormous success and the weather prevented so many from hearing you, how about coming in April and playing three other sonatas? Can you?”
Homer Guest Artist with Chicago Opera
Louise Homer will be a guest artist with the Chicago Civic Opera Association next season, and will appear in many recitals, some of them joint appearances with Louise Homer Stires, soprano.
rudolph REUTER Pianist
Accepts a limited number of students Kurfürstendamm 50	Berlin W.
Prof. GÉZA KRESZ HVioHnUstn
STUDIO: SCHÖNEBERCER UFER 44 BERLIN W.
LEONID KREUTZER,
PROFESSOR AT THE STATE HIGH SCHOOL OF MUSIC LUITPOLDSTR, 20	BERLIN W 30
Pianists Prepared for Piblic * Appearances
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Jean de Reszke 53 Rue de la Faisanderie Paris
I E,CrUCTI7V׳V /nsi׳iufe
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Gaveau Studios, 45 rue la Boetie, Paris, France
Under the personal direction of MME. THEODORE LESCHETIZKY (Marie Gabrielle Leschetizky)
John Heath, Associate Director Artists’ Class and Private Lessons
BERIN OPERA HAS AN UNOFFICIAL WAGNER FESTIVAL
Walther Kirchhoff, Returning a Guest, a Splendid Siegfried, Tristan and Lohengrin—Volksoper Gives Bartered Bride— Much Czech Music Besides—Werner Wolff Conducts Mahler’s Ninth
the contrary this perennially fresh masterpiece of operatic humor had a big popular success, though the performance, well-staged in general, had plenty of flaws. Stella Eisner, a delicious Marie to look upon, was vocally inadequate, and her partner, a lovable enough Hans, not exactly the tenor of one’s dreams. The Kezal was given by Robert Mantler, a singing comedian of great reputation and popularity, and though funny in his way he missed the shrewd bonhomie of this cheerful rogue of a marriage broker. Hans Goritz-Nieritz (like his brother Otto not unfamiliar in New York) as the leader of the circus troupe worked up an apparently improvised hurly-burly scene with genuine spirit, and made a hit. This genuine spirit was lacking, however, in the interpretation of the racy, rhythmic score at the hands of Conductor Praetorius.
This was all the more patent since a few days before a young conductor from Prague, Antonin Bednar, of Slavic blood, conducted the overture to this selfsame opera in his concert of Czech music at the Philharmonie. Bednar is a full-blooded Bohemian musician, with temperament fairly squirting out of him. He took the little overture at a furious pace that the comfortable Philharmonic men could barely follow. He electrified his audience, moreover, with a beautiful and genuinely felt performance of Smetana’s Moldau and From Bohemia’s Felds and Woodlands. Dvorak’s New World Symphony, not as frequently heard here as in America, preceded these. This was Bednar’s second visit to Berlin and one hopes that he will come often to stir the natives’ blood. They need it.
To judge from the sixth concert of the International Society for Contemporary Music, German section, Czech music today is certainly not on as high a level as in the days of Dvorak and Smetana. Works by Vitezslav Novak, Joseph Suk and Ladislav Vycplak were performed and almost without exception left the audience cold. The best of the three is obviously Suk, whose piano cycle, Erlebtes und Erträumtes, has moments of charm and at any rate betrays a definite artistic physignomy. Novak, however, while obviously an excellent musician, is academic even in the use of racial material, while Vycplak in his Visions for voice and piano, creates no atmosphere but that of monotony. The best of the Czechs, it seems, are outside of Chechoslovakia !
Fewer Orchestral Concerts.
Orchestral concerts are getting fewer and fewer, as the season goes towards its end.‘ Abendroth, like Furtwängler before him, finished his series at the opera with Beethoven’s ninth, without, however, earning either p£eans or curses for his pains (Furtwängler did both). Ignatz Waghalter, of the Deutsches Opernhaus, finished his own private series with a safe and sane program—Beethoven No. 7 and Brahms No. 2—and had a full house. A capacity house and a most enthusiastic one, too, also greeted Werner Wolff, when he conducted for the first time in years,, Mahler’s rarely heard ninth,
Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.
Mahler, like Beethoven and Bruckner, has reached the fatal number of nine with his symphonies, and like his predecessors, never heard his last symphonic work. (Here is a subject of speculation for the occultists!) Like Mahler’s other symphonies, it consists of apparently irreconcilable spiritual elements. It is noble and banal, profoundly human and theatrical by turns. Mahler drags a false melancholy from the rude'tune of a peasant dance; he unbosoms himself with his longings in interminably repeated slow mordents that end by becoming ridiculous. Its hyper-romantic, austere, strange and fantastic coloring, its bitter, mournful and despairing accents, as well as its intricate technical construction are far from satisfying for the average public.
All the more remarkable, then, that a composition so difficult and exacting should have made such a profound impression. The success obtained, while apparently vindicating the composer (next to Beethoven no symphonic composer draws like Mahler in Berlin today) from the standpoint of the present generation, bestowed real merit upon the conductor, who from a certain nervousness at the start gradually rose to a full mastery of his task, as regards the technical, the intellectual and the emotional aspects. He earned a well-deserved ovation at the end, and one learns
Berlin, April 14.—Between Easter and Whitsunday, the traditional springtime, when the trees along the Spree embankments take on a lacy transparency of fresh green, the musical season celebrates a sort of Indian summer. TKis year especially, when spring is not merely a tradition, but a joyous reality celebrated by innumerable feuilletons in the otherwise murky press, it comes particularly hard to concentrate upon this annual phenomenon. But one might as well get down to “business” once more, for what the season proper has lacked, the appearance of real celebrities promises to be made up somewhat at the fag-end. Such names as John McCormack and Louis Graveure are beginning to bob up in the announcements ; natives *like Walter Kirchhoff, who have been disporting themselves in the happy hunting grounds beyond the borders of Germany, are returning to drop a few crumbs to the folks at home. And soon the steamships will begin to disgorge the American contingent of artistic adventurers homeward bound.
The surprise of the operatic season near its end has been the return of Walther Kirchhoff, the leading heroic tenor during the very last years of the old régime. Kirchhoff left the Staatsoper, together with some other leading artists, shortly after the war, and his going was less keenly felt than it should have been, had he not been “out of condition” for a time, perhaps as the result of the war hardships, so that the critics considered him prematurely sung out. Since then, however, Kirchhoff has recovered most remarkably and may now be considered in the prime of his tenorial career. He has returned from triumphant tours of South America and Spain, and has recently been gathering fresh inspiration at the feet of Lilli Lehmann, whose queenly figure graced the opera auditorium on the night of Kirchhoff’s return, as “guest,” in Wagner’s Siegfried.
A Gala Siegfried.
It was a real gala night. The performance, under Blech, just returned to his post, had something of the old-fashioned “Glanz” of Kaiser-times, and some of the old “Strammheit,” too. There was undoubtedly a touch of revived war-spirit in the way the audience greeted Siegfried’s sword, waved by a real stalwart taking the curtain call. Kirchhoff certainly looked the part of the young Teutonic hero, and his voice was in proportion with his own heroic size. It was, moreover, brilliant and manly in quality, and of great softness and beauty in the lyric passages. A guesting Briinn-hilde, Johanna Hesse, was not a worthy partner; Carl Braun, on the other hand, a Wotan impressive in stature and voice. Ober as Erda and Waldemar Henke as Mime were up to the high standard of the performance, which, scenically pre-war, is in need of reform in this department.
Kirchhoff appeared to sold-out and enthusiastic houses again as Tristan and as Lohengrin, and especially in the latter role distinguished himself as a real star on the Wagnerian horizon. I, for one, have heard no Wagnerian hero in Germany so nearly approaching the ideal. And nowadays only a real heroic tenor can reconcile one to a part in which the step from the sublime to the ridiculous is particularly small. The performances of Tristan and Lohengrin were conducted by Schillings and Stiedry respectively. The Brangaene of Karin Branzell and the Elsa of Heckmann-Bettendorff are especially worthy of mention. All in all this little series of Wagner performances, though not advertised as such, were a Wagner Festival in quality.
Passing the Tenor Around.
The enterprising Volksoper, not to be outdone by its elder brother, the Staatsoper, has speedily engaged Kirchhoff for a couple of performances—as far as its repertory will reach —and it is now the cue for the Deutsches Opernhaus, always an open house for “guests,” to do the same. Rediscovered : a Wagnerian tenor. Let’s pass him around ! For a good tenor these days is as important as a novelty. On the strength of this axiom, evidently, the Staatsoper has postponed all its remaining novelties but two till next season, the remaining two being—Gianni Schicchi and the Coq d’Or ! Janacek’s long-promised Jenufa is said to have been postponed “for political reasons”—a hardly credible report, despite the pro-French speeches of Premier Benésh.
Czech Music, Good and Bad.
For the same reason the Volksoper could have suspended its revival of Smetana’s Bartered Bride, but it didn’t. On
A SUMMER IN MUSICAL EUROPE
The distinguished leadership of
MR. HOWARD BROCKWAY
In a summer in musical Europe, tracing the footsteps of the masters, visiting the scenes of musical history, attending the Festivals—
Presenting to students and musical enthusiasts the unparalleled opportunity of an intimate knowledge of the entire range of music in Europe to the present day.
MUSIC TRAVEL CLUB OF AMERICA
Metropolitan Opera House Bldg., 1425 Broadway, New York City
The Club’s program is illustrated in a booklet which we will be glad to send you.