53
MUSICAL COURIER
most effective, also a waltz by Godowsky, one by Mana Zucca and one by Brahms, op. 29, No. IS—but the program was too long and there were too many participants to give the proper credit to all concerned; suffice it to say that the entire program was up to the usual high standard of Miss Moiler and her pupils.
In addition to the Duo-Art, the dancers were assisted by Phradie Wells and Gladys Mathew, sopranos; Mary Cantor, pianist, Leon Goldman, violinist, and Dion W. Kennedy, organist.
two interesting arrangements by Miss Van Vollenhoven of two old Dutch folk songs.
Miss Van Vollenhoven has genuine musical feeling, finesse of style and excellent technic. Temperament, poetic feeling and seriousness of purpose mark her interpretations.
Louis Debovsky Gives Violin Recital
Louis Debovsky was heard by a large and enthusiastic audience in the auditorium of the Boys’ High School, Brooklyn, Saturday evening, April 21. His big offerings were the Vitali-Charlier Chaconne and the Vieuxtemps concerto in A minor. Shorter numbers were by Wieniawski, Handel, Tschaikowsky, Borisoff, Achron and Sarasate. This young artist displayed a facile technic, good tone, temperament and musical feeling. Josef Adler was at the piano.
PAPALARDO
AND
VOCAL ART
School
Program of de Curtis Compositions
Lots of good tunes and excellent singers to sing them were offered by Ernesto de Curtis, eminent Italian composer, at Town Hall, May S. There were also two pianists and a violinist to make the evening more interesting for the capacity crowd which responded with unusual enthusiasm and many bravos.
Giuseppe Danise and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi each offered several groups, the suave, rich baritone and pure, round tenor voices both used with characteristic intensity and fervor in the interpretation of the easily flowing lyrics written by Mr. de Curtis. Whether these songs expressed pensive, sentimental, tragic or dramatic moods they were always fortunate for the voice and the singers obviously luxuriated in them and revealed their gorgeous vocal equipments at highest potentiality. Two soprano voices, very different and equally captivating, also gave expositions of the Italian’s melodies. These were Helen Hobfon and Myrtle Schaaf. The former has a well-schooled lyric quality and sang with much artistry. Miss Schaaf has a full, warm tone with sympathetic coloring and a vivacious personality which charms an audience at once. Her diction was quite good enough to warrant ■being the only English used during the entire program. At frequent intervals Mr. de Curtis was called upon to respond to the praise of his facile accompaniments and still more facile pen.
Chev. Vito Carnevali played Mendelssohn’s Rondo with musical feeling and a good singing tone, and Josephine Arena later appeared to present the first movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata with fine intelligence and virile solidity and Moszkowski’s brilliant Caprice Espagnol with fire and well mastered technicalities. Somewhere in the interim Maria Luisa de Lorenzo gave two pleasing violin numbers, accompanied by Mr. Carnevali.
Many encores were added to the generous program and there was ample appreciation on the part of the audience to justify all of them.
Spring and Summer Classes Now Forming
Artists Accompanied in Recital
Studios :
315 WEST 98th STREET, NEW YORK
Telephones :	- Riverside 1669	- Marble 1573
Helen Möller Dancers at Aeolian Hall
Helen Möller and her artist-pupils from the Little Theater for the Greek Dance appeared in a spring festival program at Aeolian Hall on Saturday afternoon, May S, before a capacity audience. Not only were all the seats taken, but there were many standees. The program was a most interesting one, each number being given an excellent interpretation and with that grace of movement with which the Helen Möller dancers have become associated.
Miss Möller’s numbers were exceptionally well received. In the Gounod Ave Maria she was accompanied by the organ, violin, a soprano, and the Duo-Art. Miss Möller does her best work in selections calling for emotional expression, and therefore she was especially effective in this number. She also was enjoyed in several other, dances—On the Wings of Song, Mendelssohn; Floods of Spring, Rachmaninoff, and Poème des Montagnes, D’Indy—and well deserved the enthusiastic reception given her.
One of the finest interpretations of the afternoon was given to Debussy’s prelude, a l’Apres-midi d’un Faune, the dancers catching the spirit of the weird music atid conveying it to the audience. A group of Schubert waltzes was
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TEACHERS OF ARTISTIC SINGING
Cincinnati Conservatory of Music
Season 1922-23
			
	FUCITO FIVE YEARS WITH 1 /k T T ^ Author of "Caruso and the Art ./־־tL JL^L of Singing.״״ In Concert and Operatic Work		
	TEACHING. COACHING and CONCERTIZING MARTINELL FOR PAST TWO YEARS	J	
NEVADA APARTMENT, 2025 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY		Telephone: Columbus 6944	
May 17, 1923
FRIEDA HEMPEL’S IMPERSONATION OF JENNY LIND A MASTER WORK
(Continued, from page 16)
there was a howl from the purists. It was the death of the ballet! the negation of all art!—just such words as were used by Hanslick about Wagner, and by singers of the early Wagnerian days about his impossible demands on the voice, the unsingable quality of his vocal writing.
From the present day point of view, how did the singers of the old forgotten days sing? It is easy to get some idea of it from the known facts of virtuoso playing on the instruments. Paganini, for instance, is said to have used very thin strings so as to facilitate his left hand technic. If so, then he had a very thin tone, and it is probable that there was little of what we know as “punch” in his playing. The pianos of old were thin, tinkling instruments. There was little variation between piano and forte, and some of the scores are scarcely marked for expression at all. Where today they have been filled with nuance indications, the original scores had none. Some of the early scores had not even a tempo mark.
Yet the people were satisfied, and we may fairly assume that they had but limited sense of judgment in matters of interpretation and centered their entire interest on speed, lightness, virtuosity in the old sense of the word. Is it possible otherwise to imagine their enjoyment of such things as the Haydn sonatas, and those of Clementi, Boccherini and others, consisting mostly of mere purling runs? Is it possible to imagine a modern audience being satisfied with the performance of a concerto, when both orchestra and soloist played the work at sight without rehearsal, as actually happened with one of Beethoven’s immortal masterpieces ?
And with regard to singing, the case was very similar. Deems Taylor puts it in a nutshell when he says: “The people who complain that Wagner killed the art of ’ bel canto are uttering only a half truth. What he did was to demonstrate anew the fact that opera is, at its best, a dramatic rather than a strintly musical form, and that a significant voice is more thrilling than a pretty one. The singer who makes his appeal to his public on the strength of his acting and his power to color his voice to suit the dramatic exigencies of the moment can go on singing until he dies.”
Which, again, is only a half truth. For Mr. Taylor might well have included the entire art of modern song in this appraisal of values. The fact is that the days of “sweet song” are past, and when Mme. Hempel offers us a Jenny Lind program she offers not half, but twice, what Lind (probably) had to offer, for she adds to the sweetness and virtuosity of Lind the dramatic force, fervor, passion, the entire modernistic, post-Wagnerian, point of view of Hem-pel.
Hempel could not go back if she would. She could not divest herself of that breadth and strength of modern vision, which is the great achievement of our day, even if she were to try to do so, which her artistic loyalty and sincerity would not permit. Her interpretations are as far above those of the past as the interpretations of modern opera are above those of the past, or as the playing of our great modern orchestras, with their perfect balance, their careful rehearsal and preparation of the music, is beyond the orchestra playing of the past.
The Hempel Lind program is an idealization, a reconstruction. It gives a picture of the past fitted to modern eyes and ears, and deserves the same consideration and respect as the reconstructions that have been made in recent years of the Shakespeare plays, the Mozart operas, the Wagnerian reconstruction of the Nibelungen Ring and other quaint legends of the olden time.
The Jenny Lind Concert is a masterwork in miniature. And perhaps_ it may be well to add that a little such ancestor worshjp serves a useful purpose in these crass days of emancipation and iconoclasm when hardly an art-ideal is safe before the onslaughts of those who believe that salvation lies in repudiation, who look forward so persistently that, if they had their way, they would wipe out the past with a single stroke.
Frieda Hempel is not one of those. In her march forward she still has time to look back to do honor to one who carried the banner of art in the olden days .	.	. and
carried it so high, the world still sees it shimmering in the sun!	F. P.
William Thorner Praises Openshaw Ballad
William Thorner, eminent pedagogue of New York City, was asked regarding the merits of Openshaw’s ballad, Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses. He was so enthusiastic that he told a representative that, instead of writing a letter he called at the office personally to express his pleasure. Not only was the number good for teaching but also a most effective song for the artists. Tandy MacKenzie enjoys singing it. Rosa Ponselle, of the Metropolitan Opera, has programmed it on a number of her programs. Anne Roselle, also of the Metropolitan, has sung it during the past season on tour, and the same is true of Louise Baer and George Morgan, artist-pupils of the Thorner studio.
Friedberg to Remain at Institute of Musical Art
Carl Friedberg, who has been giving a ten weeks’ course of piano criticism at the Institute of Musical Art, has arranged to remain at the Institute next year as a regular member of the faculty. Mr. Friedberg will also make a concert tour in the fall, playing with the principal symphony orchestras and in recital. His last tour in this country was in 1913, when he gave a series of concerts with Fritz Kreisler and played with the symphony orchestras in the leading cities. Since that time until this past winter when he came to the Institute, he has been teaching and concertizing in Europe.
Hanna Van Vollenhoven Gives Recital
Hanna Van Vollenhoven, talented pianist and composer, was heard by a large and enthusiastic audience at the Hotel Majestic, April 27. Her program was varied, including a Beethoven sonata (the Moonlight), the second Liszt Hungarian rhapsody and numbers by Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Chabrier and Gerard Tonning. There were also