MUSICAL COURIER
38
May 10, 1923
in Symphony Hall. He delighted the usual capacity throng with an all-Chopin program, including the fantasia, four preludes, two nocturnes, the A flat ballade, scherzo in B flat minor, barcarolle, four etudes, the funeral march sonata, a mazurka, a waltz and polonaise. It is hardly necessary to add that the haunting beauty of Chopin’s music—its melody, its sensitive fancy, its power and beauty—were fully revealed through the masterful genius of the great pianist. As usual, the insatiate audience demanded and. received a supplementary concert of encores.
Concerts Begin at Art Museum.
Monday evening, April 30, the Museum of Fine Arts resumed its custom of giving a series of spring concerts, the first being provided by an orchestra of Boston Symphony players, under the excellent direction of Agide Jacchia. As in previous years there was no charge for admittance, and the galleries of the Museum were open from 7 to 11 o’clock. The second concert, will be given on Thursday evening, May 10, with the Harvard Glee Club as the attraction.
Jeannette Vreeland Pleases With Men's Glee Clubs.
Jeannette Vreeland, soprano, was soloist at the second annual concert of the Men’s Federated Glee Clubs of Boston, Monday evening, April 30, in Jordan Hall. She sang the familiar waltz song from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, and two groups of pieces by Moir, Wolff, Watts, Huerter, Ganz, Barnett, Sinding and Park, besides being heard with the entire chorus in the closing number of the program, Stevenson’s Omnipotence. This soprano is gifted with a lovely voice which she uses with some skill. Her diction is notably fine and she sings expressively. All in all, Miss Vreeland made a very excellent impression and was repeatedly recalled. Arthur Fiedler gave further proof of his fine abilities as an accompanist—musicianly, unobtrusive and altogether helpful.
The chorus sang a program of uncommon interest, the conducting by the three directors of the clubs being very effective. A large audience gave the singers a friendly welcome.
Maier and Pattison Play for Scholarship Fund.
Returning to their alma mater, Guy Maier, T3, and Lee Pattison, TO, received a great ovation when they appeared as soloists at a concert in aid of the loan fund of the Beneficent Society of the New England Conservatory of Music on Friday evening, May 4, in Jordan Hall. The Beneficent Society, founded in 1885 by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe and Kate Gannett Wells, annually gives an entertainment to increase the fund that is lent to. deserving students at the conservatory. These brilliant musicians volunteered their services to make this year’s concert especially successful.
The program, given by Messrs. Maier and Pattison and the Conservatory Orchestra, Wallace Goodrich conductor, included Mr. Pattison’s own orchestral arrangement of the Liszt Concerto Pathetique, for two pianofortes; the Bach concerto in C minor, for two pianofortes; Mendelssohn’s overture, The Fair Melusina; Bizet’s Second Suite from the incidental music to L’Arlesienne, and Debussy’s prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun.
Luella Meluis Heard in Patti Program.
Sunday evening, April 29, in Symphony Hall, Luella Melius, soprano, made her Boston debut as a concert singer. Assisted by Raymond Williams, flutist, and Ralph Angell, accompanist, she sang Handel’s Sweet Bird (with flute), Constance’s first air from Mozart’s II Seraglio, O del mio amato ben by Donaudy, Liszt’s setting of Victor Hugo’s Comment! disaient ils, Fiocca la Neve, by Cimara, a Scandinavian song by Peterson-Berger, Wintter Watts’ Wings of Night, Strauss’ Serenade, and Farley’s Night Wind.
The second part of the evening’s entertainment was a “Program devoted to the memory of Adelina Patti, arranged 'by Jean de Reszke, interpreted by Luella Meluis.” Mr. Williams opened this part of the program with a neat performance of pieces from Gluck and Godard. Then appeared Mme. Meluis, appropriately costumed and her hair changed from gold to black, presumably after the fashion of Mme. Patti’s period. She sang Deh Vieni, from Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro; Weckerlin’s arrangement of La Capinera (with flute); Tosti’s Serenata, Robin Adair and Home, Sweet Home, and Una Voce from Rossini’s II Barbiere. The program was a trifle monotonous, though Mme. Meluis did much to infuse life into it. Her voice often recalls Melba’s in its clarity, purity of intonation and freedom. She is a skilled technician, who has mastered the intricacies of coloratura singing, her runs and trills in the ornate airs on her program being noteworthy. The audience applauded Mme. Meluis, and there were many repetitions and encores.
Paderewski Hears N. E. Conservatory Pupils.
Ignace Paderewski visited the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, April 30, for the purpose of hearing two advanced students of the pianoforte, Jesus M. Sanroma and Mary E. Madden, both studying this season with Antoinette Szumowska. Miss Madden played Mr. Paderewski’s own variations in A major; Mr. Sanroma, a movement from the sonata in B minor of Chopin, Mr. Chadwick’s The Frogs and the Paderewski Cracovienne.
Mr. Sanroma was sent to the conservatory several years ago as a scholarship pupil of the insular government of Porto Rico. He was graduated with honors in 1920, winning the Mason & Hamlin prize in his year. He has lately been a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, winning very favorable notices from the local critics.
Miss Madden, an honor graduate of 1922, is from Rochester, Minn. She was pianoforte soloist at the concert given in Symphony Hall by the Conservatory Orchestra in 1921, and has made many Jordan Hall appearances.
People’s Choral Union Sings Golden Legend.
The People’s Choral Union of this city gave its second and final concert of the season Sunday evening, April 22, in Symphony Hall. The large, well schooled chorus_ of this organization demonstrated its praiseworthy abilities in a fine performance of Sullivan’s grateful oratorio, The Golden Legend, being particularly effective in its a capella singing of the Villagers’ Evening Hymn. Although the orchestra was numerically inadequate for the possibilities of the score, George Sawyer Dunham, the admirable conductor of the People’s Choral Union, minimized this handicap and gave a commendabie reading of the music. Of the soloists— Mines. Moody and MacDonald and Messrs. Hudson and Bennett—Marjorie Moody proved anew her splendid abilities as a singer and interpreter while Mr. Bennett sang the music of Lucifer with fitting fervor.
J. C.
BRILLIANTLY
FORTY-SECOND SEASON OF BOSTON
SYMPHONY CLOSES
Ovation for Conductor Monteux and Players—Review of Season's Programs—Other News of the Week
Game, from Suite Primeval; Smith, D. S., Fete Galante for orchestra with flute obligato (Georges Laurent); Tcherpnin, piano concerto (Benno Moiseiwitsch); Williams, Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis for double-stringed orchestra.
The following compositions were heard for the first time at these concerts:
Casella, Italia; Foote, A Night Piece, for flute and string orchestra (Georges Laurent); Griffes, The White Peacock; Puccini, Aria, Vissi d’Arte, from Tosca (Frances Alda); Rossini, Overture to Semiramide; Spontini, Overture to La Vestale.
The following composers were represented at these concerts for the first time: Davico, Goossens, Hoist, Honegger, Koechlin, Marx, Powell, Puccini, Salzedo, Skilton, Tcherpnin and Turina.
The list of soloists was:
Sopranos, Frances Alda, Frieda Hempel, Margaret Matzenauer, 3; violinists, Richard Burgin, Georges Enesco, Toscha Seidel, Albert Spalding, 4; violoncellist, Jean Bedetti, 1; flutist, Georges Laurent, 1; harpist, Carlos Salzedo, 1; pianists, Alfredo Casella, Alfred Cortot, Benno Moiseiwitsch, John Powell, Olga Samaroff, Arthur Schnabel, 6; organist, Marc.l Dupre, 1; total, 17.
Extra Concerts.
The orchestra gave five extra Symphony concerts, at which Ernest Schelling, pianist; Renee Chemet, violinist; Magde-leine Brard, pianist; Mme. Ferrabini-Jacchia, soprano, and Florence Macbeth, soprano, were the soloists, while Georges Mager, trumpeter, and Jesus Sanroma, pianist, took part in the performance of Saint-Saëns’ trumpet septet.
There were two concerts for the Pension Fund. Mme. Slobodskaja sang at the first; Sigrid Onegin, soprano, and Charles H. Bennett, at the second.
There were two concerts for young people, a concert for the benefit of Mr. Gericke, and the orchestra took part in the Chickering Centennial concert, when Mr. Dohnanyi’s Variations on a Nursery Song for orchestra with piano were played for the first time in America, Mr. Dohnanyi, pianist.
Of the fifty-eight composers represented on the twenty-four Boston programs Beethoven and Mozart were tied for the lead, each having six works. Wagner came next, with five; Franck and Brahms, with four each; Liszt, Saint-Saëns and Schumann, with three each; Bach, Berlioz, Casella, Chausson, Debussy, Dvorak, Glazounov, Griffes, Haydn, Marx,.Mendelssohn, Respighi, Rimsky-Korsakoff, R. Strauss, Weber and Vaughan Williams, with two each.
American composers were represented by Ballantine, Chadwick, Foote, Griffes, Loeffler, MacDowell, D. G. Mason, Powell, Skilton, D. S. Smith, Ernest Bloch and Carlos Salzedo. Ballantine’s From the Garden of Hellas received its first public performance.
Next season’s concerts will be resumed at Symphony Hall on Friday afternoon, October 12, and Saturday evening, October 13. The orchestra will be practically the same, while Mr. Monteux will enter upon the third and last year of his present contract as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony Repeated.
Heeding numerous requests, Pierre Monteux included Vaughan Williams’ deeply impressive London symphony for a fourth time in a symphony program at the concerts of Friday afternoon and Saturday evening, April 27 and 28, in Symphony Hall. Mr. Williams, probably the most eminent of contemporary British composers, portrays with effectively contrasting colors the life, spirit and melancholy atmosphere of the London that he knows and loves so well. This . delightful composition, which Mr. Monteux introduced and repeated here two seasons ago, discloses new beauties with further acquaintance and may fairly be considered one of the most significant works of this generation.
Upon the same program the French conductor placed three pieces in canon form, by Schumann, arranged for orchestra by Dubois, and a Suite Primeval on tribal Indian melodies, by Charles S. Skilton, professor of music at the University of Kansas. The former work is distinctly pleasurable only when the Schumann of wistful beauty and gentle melancholy is permitted to be lyrical unfettered by the contrapuntal artificialities of the Parisian Dubois. Skilton’s pieces, Flute Serenade and Moccasin Game, are agreeable, well written and generally effective music, and were heartily applauded. Wagner’s dramatic overture to Rienzi brought the concert to a brilliant close.
Mason & Hamlin Prize Awarded at N. E. Conservatory.
Florence Judith Levy, of Dorchester, Mass., won the Mason & Hamlin prize of a grand pianoforte at the fourteenth annual competition of the New England Conservatory of Music, in Jordan Hall, May 2. Miss Levy began her music studies at the conservatory when she was ten years old, and has been continuously a pupil of Anna Stovall Lothian. She was graduated from the Dorchester High School in 1920, and since then has given her entire time to her conservatory work. Last summer she went to Chicago and played before Percy Grainger, winning one of the scholarships which he offers in his summer course. Miss Levy will be graduated from the conservatory in June.
The judges of the competition were Pierre Monteux, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Harold Randolph, director of the Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, and Ernest Hutcheson, concert pianist. Each of the five contestants was required to play the following selections; Fugue in E minor (Well-tempered Clavichord, Book II, No. 10), Bach; sonata in E flat major, op. 8 la (Les Adieux), (first movement), Beethoven; Etudes, in F major, op. 10, No. 8; in F major, op. 25, No. 2, Chopin.
Previous winners of the Mason & Hamlin prize, among whom are several pianists who have achieved national reputation, have been; 1910, Julius Chaloff; 1911, Grace Nicholson; 1912, Charles L. Shepherd; 1913, Sara Helen Littlejohn; 1914, Herbert Ringwall; 1915, Howard Goding; 1916, Fannie Levis; 1917, Martha Baird; 1918, Sue Kyle South-wick; 1919, Naomi Bevard; 1920, Jesus Sanroma; 1921, Walter Hanson; 1922, Alice M. Rathbun.
Paderewski in Final Concert.
Ignace Jan Paderewski, the Polish pianist, gave his third and last concert of the season Sunday afternoon, April 29,
Boston, Mass., May 6.—The forty-second season of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was brought to a brilliant close with the concerts of Friday afternoon• and Saturday evening, May 4 and 5, in Symphony Hall. Conductor Monteux was greeted with sustained applause and shared the warm greeting with his company of virtuosos on the platform.
The program opened auspiciously with a capital performance of the greatest of all overtures, the third Leonora of Beethoven, played in a manner that fully revealed its beauty, grandeur and compelling power. Departing from tradition, Mr. Monteux included a novelty in this last program, the first performance in America of Chausson’s Soir de Fete. Although composed a year before his untimely death, this work has never been published. It bears the mark of Chausson’s characteristic style, not only in form (which often recalls Cesar Franck) but in substance—with the subtle tenderness and extreme sensitiveness that we have come to associate with this gifted man. Respighi’s colorful and highly imaginative tone picturing of the fountains of Rome recalled old pleasures, while Saint-Saëns’ nobly conceived and masterfully written symphony in C minor for orchestra with organ brought the concert and the season to a stirring and wholly effective close.
The Symphony Season.
The season has been one of the most successful in the history of the orchestra—notwithstanding the shifting of loyalties in New York. Virtually re-created by Mr. Monteux, the orchestra has been restored to its old efficiency and compares more than favorably with the thrice admirable organizations of Gericke, Nikisch and Muck—not to say with the tonal companies of Philadelphia and New York. At home the Boston Band has received the unqualified and enthusiastic support of its public. Indeed, announcement is made that there will be no sale of seats for the Friday afternoon concerts of next season, the few reserved seats not resubscribed being insufficient to fill applications on the waiting list, and this notwithstanding an increase in prices.
Monteux as Program Maker.
Mr. Monteux demonstrated again his catholicity as a program maker—one of his signal virtues as an orchestral leader. Although the novel pieces of his programs are not invariably significant, he has revived some interesting old compositions and has kept his audiences in touch with modern tendencies in music by giving new composers an opportunity to be heard. Thus, eight works were played for the first time in America, eighteen for the first time in Boston, and six for the first time at these concerts. The compositions heard for the first time in America were:
Chausson, Soir de Fete; Davico, Symphonic _ Poem, Polyphemus; Dohnanyi, Violin Concerto, op. 27 (Albert Spalding); Goossens, Tam o’ Shanter; Honegger, Horace Victorieux; Koechlin, Three Chorales; Stravinsky, Suite No. 1, from the Ballet Pulcinella; Turina, Danzas Fantásticas.
These works were performed for the first time in Boston:
Albeniz, Spanish Rhapsody for piano and orchestra (orchestrated by Casella; Alfredo-Casella, pianist); Bax, November Woods; Bloch, Schelomo (Solomon, Jewish Rhapsody for cello and orchestra, Jean Bedetti); Bossi, Theme with Variations; Casella, Pupazzetti; Chadwick, Anniversary Overture; Dvorak, Symphony, F major, No. 3, op. 76; Griffes, Clouds; Holst, The Planets; Marx, Two songs with orchestra, Marienlied, and If Love Hath Entered Thy Heart (Francis Alda); Mason, D. G., Prelude and Fugue for piano and orchestra (John Powell); Powell, Rhapsody Negre for orchestra and piano (John Powell); Rimsky-Korsakoff, Conte Feerique, op. 29, and Suite' from The Legend of the Tsar Saltan; Salzedo, Enchanted Isles, for harp and orchestra (Carlo Salzedo); Skilton, Flute Serenade and Moccasin
EDOARDO PETRI
TEACHER OF SINGING
announces that he will continue teaching without interruption throughout the summer.
Studio 1425 Broadway New York City
Telephone Pennsylvania 2628
ASHLEY PETTIS
PIANIST
Will remain in New York all summer. A limited number of pupils will be accepted.	:	:
Address Ashley Pettis’ Studios 350 West 85th Street	New York
Phone Schuyler 0441
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