32
May 31, 1923
Graener, Jarnach, Erich Wolf, Schönberg and Strauss, and as a novel feature brought along a group of Hungarian folk songs, in the selection of which his Hungarian accompanist, Arpád Sándor, no doubt had his share. These he sang in English, and with an amount of dramatic and gestural aids that one would have been willing to dispense with in simple folk music.
The really remarkable feature of Graveure’s singing is its technical mechanical perfection—a perfection and smoothness that almost pall at times. The beauty of his voice is almost unmatched among baritones. There are those, nevertheless, who prefer greater masculinity and an occasional coarse accent. His diction, too, is perfect, and his German pronunciation has greatly improved since last year. He puts the maximum of meaning into every phrase; indeed it is almost too carefully thought out. It is an exhibition of the power of intelligence that is in itself a technical wonder. All that one can wish Mr. Graveure is that he might let himself go now and again. Spontaneity is an ingredient of all great art, and an indispensible element of genius is naivete.
The Beethoven Hall was literally packed at Graveure’s recitals, and the enthusiasm ran high. It was almost as packed when Elena Gerhardt, now the supreme mistress of German song, gave her single recital. I know of nothing more beautiful nor more accomplished and satisfying than Elena Gerhardt’s Heder singing. It is without pretense, simple, yet impressive by its very simplicity. She always gives just enough and not a hair’s breadth more; she uses no means but her voice and the inflections of word and phrase, and in them, as in a mirror, she reflects the sentiments and emotions that she really feels. This indeed is highest art. She sang the entire Winterreise of Schubert, and I could hear but a few of the songs. But I was grateful for that.
Tenors Galore.
Berlin, which is chronically inflicted with a famine in tenors, suddenly had more than its fill. There was McCormack, and a few days before him Jadlowker, no longer in his prime; there was Björn Talen, a powerful young Swede, who showed in a whole evening of operatic arias that he has the makings of a near-Caruso, if not a real one. And at the opera houses there was Richard Tauber, who achieved a triumph as Don Ottavio and has actually been secured for three months of each season, and Dmitry Smirnoff, who has the voice but especially all the bad manners of the typical primo uomo. The unfortunate part of all this is that in another week these birds of passage will have northward or westward flown, and Berlin will again be left high and dry. It has the ideal operatic machinery but constantly lacks the grease.
Nevertheless, as I said in my last letter, the opera houses will run on nearly all summer. The concerts, on the other hand, are over. There are a few stragglers still announced and these will have to have attention. Then, after a short respite, the reviewer will have to sharpen his pen for the festivals. At present, however, we shall have a look at the lit-up chestnut trees and listen to—the birds.
César Saerchinger.
MUSICAL COURIER
BERLIN SEASON ENDS BRILLIANTLY
WITH INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY CONCERT
Wonderful Dresden Orchestra Under Busch Plays Modern German Works-McCormack, Gerhardt and Graveure Lead Singers’ Galaxy—Philharmonic Orchestra on International Tour
Bohnke’s development will be worth watch-A Noble Work.
sions of youth, ing.
The other novelty was Philipp Jarnach’s Sinfonia Brevis. Jarnach is a Spaniard born in France, but his musical thought is Teutonic, which may be racially accounted for by the fact that his mother was of Flemish origin. He passed the war years in Zürich under Busoni’s spiritual influence. Busoni is the only composer of whom there is any direct trace in Jarnach’s art, and that trace is slight. There is no national color of any sort, either. It appears to be the result of culture throughout, the expression of refined and noble thought in cultivated forms. And yet it does not lack blood. It is absolute music, but not of the synthetic abstractism that is the fetich of some of the youngest set.
Written in 1919, this work, sombre in color and phraseology throughout, is said to have been the spiritual reflection of the depressing events of the war. Without a program and without the conventional form of mourning it turns the listener’s thought inward in reverence and profound pity. It satisfies no desire for sensual beauty, yet it fulfills a longing for poetic expression. It is modern in harmony, yet not strikingly so, and does not forsake the aids of measure and key. I must say that there is hardly another composer of his generation who has moved me as Jarnach has, most intensely of course in his beautiful string quintet, which was recently repeated in Berlin.
Both of these works received excellent interpretations at Busch’s hands. He was, of course, most at home in Reger, whose _ Mozart variations had a fascinatingly clear and dynamically impressive performance, and in Strauss, whose Don Quixote was played with delectable humor and astonishing virtuosity, Prof. Georg Wille, a famous interpreter of the part, taking the cello solo. The ovations that greeted the orchestra after each of these works has not been equalled here since the visit of Mengelberg’s men.
A review of the International Society’s Berlin activities during the past season, published in the program, reveals the fact that it has produced thirty-two works, twenty-five of them for the first time in Berlin.
Louis Graveure’s Popularity.
There is something of a paradox in the way McCormack, the popular, is viewed in Berlin—as a musician and an artist of high calibre, which he undoubtedly is—while Graveure, who is a “highbrow” at home, is already regarded as a matinee idol here. But then, Berlin is a highbrow town. Louis Graveure returned after his sensational debut of last year and gave two recitals with the familiar groups of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf. He also made a bow to German modernism with selections by Pfitzner,
Berlin, May 8.—The last big orchestral concert of the season took place on Saturday, and on Sunday, as if by command, the blossoms on the chestnut trees lit up—a sign that summer has really come and that music-making is henceforth the business of the birds. In the winter Berlin is a plain, cheerless city at best; in the summer its thousands of trees in parks, along the streets and canals, beautiful in themselves, set off what beauty there is in the way of architecture. But no sooner does Berlin put on its better mien than Berliners leave it in droves, for, whatever may have become of other German virtues, the German wanderlust is all there.
No doubt the International Society for Contemporary Music suffered from this wanderlust and from the oppressive heat inside the hall, which detracted from the pure pleasure of its closing concert. And yet	the hall was	all but full
of enthusiasts.	It	was the last	concert, not	only of the
society but of the season in general; for the Philharmonic Orchestra, indispensible medium of Berlin’s musical manifestations, has	left	on a tour of	Italian and	Swiss cities,
returning, only	for	a festival of	Austrian music in June.
Its usual place was taken at this concert by the Dresden State Orchestra, one of the crack orchestras of all Germany.
An Ideal Orchestra.
This orchestra is wonderful. It represents the high-water mark of German instrumentalism, as it was known before the war. The war has, apparently, made no difference to its tonal quality, its discipline and its musical finesse, and it has made no break in its high tradition, which is a record of three and three-quarters centuries. Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner conducted the Dresden Orchestra for years, and under Schuch’s iron discipline it reached the pinnacle of its fame. Fritz Reiner, now in Cincinnati, was his artistic successor, and now it is Fritz Busch, no doubt one of the most gifted and most idealistic musicians of the new Germany. By identifying himself with the aims of the International Society he has proved a breadth of mind and a progressiveness that the admirers of his pronounced Teutonism hardly reckoned with.
The program comprised two novelties by the young generation, and two representative works of the accredited modern German school. A symphonic overture by Emil Bohnke, the young conductor of the Leipsic Symphony Orchestra, revealed an orchestral mastery which, considering that the work was written at the age of twenty-three, is truly astonishing. It is imbued with the spirit of youth and fairly explodes with energy, unfortunately by means of Straussian explosives. For the rest the work lives somewhere between the Siegfried Idyll and Brahms’ C minor _ symphony, naturally not without trespassing upon its neighbor’s estates. But there are already later evidences to show that these trespasses were merely the diver-
tributing to Prof. Baldwin the creation of love of music among thousands of people. Dr. Carl also talked most fittingly, alluding to Prof. Baldwin and his connection with the Guilmant Organ School, then pinning the gold medal on his coat. With Dr. Carl playing America, and all standing, the personal tribute to Prof. Baldwin ended by the recipient’s modest acknowledgment. A student also brought a large box of roses, following which Prof. Baldwin played the last number of his program, Theme and Finale (Thiele) with splendid verve. Previous to this his own The Vision proved to be an interesting work. The present writer attended the first half hundred recitals at City College, begun by Prof. Baldwin in 1907, and was interested to hear many of the numbers, played at that time, repeated at this affair. By the Sea (Schubert) is of transcendent beauty as played by him; the Good Friday music shines with lofty sentiment, and Bach’s big Fantasie and Fugue in G minor was also one of the splendid items of the program. A sketch of Prof. Baldwin’s career was printed on the program as follows:
Samuel A. Baldwin, Lake City, Minn. Janu-?17	־ Benjamin Chapman and Anna
4a» (Atkinson) B. grad. Royal Conservatory of Music, Dresden, 1884; m. Anna Elizabeth Jones, Trumansburg, N. Y., June 28, 1887. Be-gan at fifteen as organist in Hope Presbyterian eHif•׳ St P״a״ui׳ Mi”n• Organist of Plymouth ch. Chicago, 1885-9, dir. choral socs. and organist bt. Paul, Minneapolis, 1889-95; settled in N. Y. City, 1895 served as organist Ch. of the Intercession, later at Holy Trinity Ch. succeeding Dudley Buck• professor Music and Organist, Co l. City of New York since 1907. A founder fellow and Past Warden Am. Guild Organists, composer of symphony, a suite, ch. pieces and songs.	__________
American Institute Students’ Recitals
May 14 pupils of Miss Chittenden, Mrs. Madden and Messrs. Raudenbush, Tebbs, Spiering and Moore appeared in a program of fourteen numbers at the American Institute of Applied Music, Kate S. Chittenden dean. Piano, violin and_ vocal numbers made up a program of varied _ components, the young participants in the order of their appearance being Caroline Moore, Nancy Hankins Jeannette Dalton, Edith Stetler, Charles Joseph Oliva, Florence Mallory Sanford. Teddy Abramowitz, Isabel Scott, Thomas Curley, Adele Halstein, Elsie M. Rockwell, Anne Gordon, John Passaretti, and . i	Pfaf־er• Isabel Scott gave her
own recital on May 18, playing works by Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Gneg, Scriabin, Debussy, Sternberg and Chopin, reflecting much credit on her teacher Miss Chit tenden, for she interpreted these works in a manner which
enthusiasticaliv6 annlandpH6 C°mP°SerS• AU the PuPils
Samuel A. Baldwin Gives 900th Recital
Official notice was taken of the 900th public organ recital by Prof. Samuel A. Baldwin, at his recital in the Great Hall, College of the City of New York, May 20. This consisted of the presentation of a gorgeous flag of the City, by city officials, and the gold medal of the Guilmant Organ School by Dr. William C. Carl. Prof. Bronson, representing the
SAMUEL A. BALDWIN
college, introduced Hon. Philip Berolzheimer, City Chamber-lain, in charge of public music, who with appropriate remarks introduced Hon. Charles L. Guy, Justice of the Supreme Court, representing the Mayor.
Judge Guy delivered a talk which was full of eloquence and echoed the feelings of many a person-.present, in- at-
M ME. VIRGINIA
COLOMBA I
Formerly of the Metropolitan Opera Teacher of Josephine Lucchese
(Member of Faculty, New York College of Music)
SUMMER MASTER CLASS
LAKE ORION, MICHIGAN
July 9-27
For information apply to JAMES L. H1MR0D 2427 First National Bank Bldg., Detroit, Mich.
Mme. Colombati’s New York studio, 294 West 92d Street, will remain open during the Summer months under the direction of her assistant, Anne Weeks.