June 7, 19 23
MUSICAL COURIER
8
Rost and Why Again.
Greta Rost, contralto, and Foster Why, bass-baritone, gave another of their interesting and unconventional vocai
Prelude, Choral and Fugue as his principal item. The audience seemed to show most interest in a group of shorter and less important pieces at the end of the program, though many hearers were more amused than enraptured by Henry Cowell’s The Tides of Manaunaun. Striking whole groups of miscellaneous notes with the elbow is still too much of an innovation here to be accepted seriously by islanders who are familiar only with the Atlantic _ tides which wash the shores of England. Frederick Bristol, however, is justified in playing novelties, even though The Three Country Dances by Beethoven are no better than they ought to be. The young artist plays with poetry and beauty of tone. His first London recital may fairly be called successful.
A Danish Pianist.
Victor Schioler, the Danish pianist who completed his series of recitals here last night, did not set the Thames on fire. When a pianist deliberately adds so many_ notes to Chopin and plays such tricks with rhythm, I find it difficult to place him among the elect who are born to play the piano for the edification of the world. There may be select audiences here and there which prefer this caviar to the plain fare furnished by the great composers.
The Roumanian composer Bela Bartók has given two piano recitals of his music during the past few days. I heard the second recital at the piano school of George Woodhouse and was not unduly thrilled. Much of the music bored me with its monotonous triviality and the best of it would sound but tame beside the sweetness of old fashioned Chopin or the acidity of new fashioned Stravinsky. A few years ago Bela Bartók forsook the beaten track and struck out for himself across the desert. Unfortunately for him, however, the new pathfinders have blazed their trails in another direction and he appears to be deserted alike by the orthodox and unorthodox. At any rate his music has no message for me. Like many another contemporary composer he has written what George Wood-house calls temporary music.
The Violinists.
The violinists have not been idle meanwhile, though composers do not write as lavishly for the violin as for the piano. The programs at violin recitals contain too many old Italian sonatas and concertos or too many transcriptions, mostly by Kreisler. Oh 1 for a stock of ballades, barcarolles, fantasies for the violin, such as Chopin wrote for the piano!
After listening to Jelly d’Ar-anyi play Bach unaccompanied at Wigmore Hall some days ago, I hurried across to Aeolian Hall to hear Daisy Kennedy’s delightful performance of a rich and joyous sonata by Delius. No doubt the personality of the violinist had a great deal to do with the effect the music made on me, but I must herewith record that no sonata for violin and piano has so taken my fancy since Grieg’s sonata in F took hold of me some thirty-eight years ago.
Roderick White Plays
Roderick White, with Percy Kahn at the piano, played Grieg’s C minor sonata at his second recital in Aeolian Hall last week, and played it exceedingly well. This young American violinist arrived in London on the day of the royal wedding, after an abominably rough passage across the sea from France. Both he and his violin were a little out of order for the recital a day later, and no one was more surprised than the violinist himself to read in the newspapers that. he played brilliantly, like a virtuoso. He said he felt as if he would not have enough technical skill to finish the program. Next day he left his violin at Hill’s for repairs and I spirited him across the river to a spot remote from concert halls, and got him to pose for his photograph before the house in which the renowned Charles Chaplin, actor and violinist, was born some thirty-odd years ago. On the authority of Roderick White, who hails from California, I base my assertion that Charlie Chaplin holds the violin in his right hand and bows with the left. He would!
When Roderick White got back his violin, from the same firm which had repaired the viol of Pepys two hundred and fifty years ago, he gave a second recital in which he demonstrated his ability to play with sentiment, grace and charm as well as with breadth and brilliancy.
Anna Hegner, violinist, whose brother, Otto Hegner, was a well known boy pianist some years ago, is now engaged in the onerous task of giving four orchestral concerts, with the help of Sir Henry Wood, playing four concertos at each concert. She has a remarkably sure and reliable technic, a generous and musical tone, and she is apparently as much at home in the classics of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, as in the more brilliant, showy and sentimental concertos of De Beriot and Vieuxtemps. There are two more concerts to come, when Spohr, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and other composers are to be drawn upon. I consider Anna Hegner one of the greatest violinists I have ever heard. Her success before the public must now depend on the persuasive powers of personality. I do not know whether Anna Hegner will win all hearts or not, like Tom Hood’s Fair Ines, but I am certain that she is an uncommonly fine violinist.
LONDON ENJOYS ROSENTHAL’S PLAYING
Celebrated Pianist Plays Solo Part in Chopin’s E Minor Concerto with Sir Henry Wood’s Orchestra-Katharine Goodson’s Program with Orchestra Thoroughly Enjoyed—Three American Pianists Heard—Da. Buell and Frederick Bristol Give Their First London Recitals—Roderick White Heard Again—Greta Rost-Foster Why Again Fill Aeolian Hall—Harriet Van Emden Delights—Other News
Harold Samuel on Saturday gave the last of his six Bach recitals. This scholarly pianist has the power of holding the interest of large audiences with two hours of solid and unrelieved Bach. He has the prophetic power of Ezekiel to make the dried bones live: “Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live. L willingly acknowledge the greatness of Bach, but I am not one of those who place the composer on an impossibly high pedestal and put the interpreter in the dust. The dry bones of Bach’s old clavier and harpsichord music are soon revealed when most pianists play it with a modern spirit and a mongrel accent formed from Beethoven’s energy, Liszt’s brilliancy, and Chopin’s elastic rhythms. Several of Bach’s organ works are pleasing to the modern public when they are transcribed in a modern manner and played in a modern fashion. But to play the little pieces of Bach exactly as Bach wrote them and with what appears to be an eighteenth century spirit, is as difficult as to write a chapter in the style of St. Paul and avoid all traces of contemporary thought.
Katharine Goodson’s Program.
hearted animation and pleasant fantasy into her interpretations that no one worried very much about the departures from tradition and the wayward unconventionalities from time to time. The audience was pleased from beginning to end and insisted on several extra numbers. Dai Buell has a very efficient finger technic which enables her to play rapid passages with clearness and beauty of tone. Her touch is also agreeable.
Frederick Bristol Makes Good Impression.
Frederick Bristol made a good impression at his, first London recital a day or two ago, playing César Franck’s
Jeffry Reynolds may have had good reasons, which are unknown to me, for giving a piano recital on May Day in Wigmore Hall. Musically he is far too immature for such an undertaking and more in need of lessons than the verdict of the public.
The merits and demerits of Norman Wilks, however, are purely matters of temperament and musical judgment. He has long left the class room and taken his place among the most eminent pianists of England. His two recitals in Wigmore Hall, last week and yesterday, drew large audiences which gave him unstinted applause. Apparently his second program, consisting entirely of Chopin works, gave
his hearers the most pleasure, if noisy approval is an indication of musical satisfaction.
Three American Pianists.
-Three American pianists have played here recently, presumably with the desire to win the favor of the British public. On May 3 Harold Henry struggled manfully against adverse circumstances in Wigmore and played a number of compositions more or less successfully until the pedal of his piano, which had been recalcitrant, came _ off and lay in passive resistance on the floor. A mechanic finally put matters right, and Harold Henry immediately became the pianist who had made so deep and favorable an impression at his recital in Wigmore Hall last year. The second part of the program was excellently played. The British public, which always takes kindly to pluck, gave Harold Henry a very warm greeting when he sat down again to the restored piano. He was compelled to repeat a composition of his own and to add some extra numbers at the end. After a stormy voyage he sailed triumphantly into the haven—ad astra per asperam, so to speak.
Dai Buell’s First London Recital.
Dai Buell gave her first London recital in Aeolian Hall last week and proved at once that she is a young woman of temperament and moods. She brought so much warm
London, May 18.—When the new Stadium was opened in North London some three weeks ago 127,000 spectators got in, and 75,000 were shut out on account of lack of space. As the occasion was neither an oratorio performance nor a piano recital, but a football match, I stayed^ away and consoled myself with an orchestral concert m Queen s Hall.
Sir Henry Wood was in a happy mood, so it appeared, and conducted admirably such divergent works as Beethoven’s eighth symphony, Holst’s Planets and׳ Scriabin s Poem of Ecstasy. The sensation of the afternoon, however, was made by Rosenthal, who played the solo pari of Chopin’s E minor concerto with a delicacy and a poetic charm which defy description—with a tenderness and grace which came as a revelation to many hearers who knew only the thundering virtuoso. Lest I should be accused of exaggeration I will say no more, but will quote from the Daily Telegraph: “A more superb performance it is simply not possible to imagine—the kind of statement one may make seldom in a lifetime.”
Chopin’s E minor concerto gives the virtuoso but little scope to astonish and carry by storm. It must be left to those pianists who can see in it the musical embodiment of the closing scenes of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice:
The moon shines bright. .	.	•
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.
Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
In my opinion, Rosenthal’s performance was worthy of the great poet and composer’s creative work. “When shall we three meet again?”
Harold Samuel Concludes Bach Recitals.
(Photographed for the Musical Courier by Clarence Lucas.)
CHARLES CHAPLIN’S BIRTHPLACE,
Lambeth, London, with the American violinist, Roderick White, in the foreground.
Katharine Goodson’s program for her orchestral concert in Queen’s Hall last Thursday was not unconventional.
.	. She played two well known, perhaps well worn,
concertos by Beethoven and Liszt, and a less known and not very exciting concerto by Delius. Her emphatic success was therefore in no sense due to her program, but to her interpretation thereof. Novelties have a certain amount of attraction for some hearers but the real test of an artist s ability is to satisfy a critical audience with the interpretation of familiar works which so many great artists have played. As Katharine Goodson had an immense audience at this her third appearance in Queen’s Hall this season, and was recalled to the platform many times by her admirers, there is nothing left for me to say about her interpretation of Beethoven, Delius, and Liszt. A lesser artist might have been disturbed by the hearty reception given to Arnold Bax, who was present to hear Albert Coates’ London Symphony Orchestra play his Tintagel overture, but the Liszt work gave the pianist ample opportunity to cap the climax of sensation.
Other Concerts.

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MANA-ZUCCA
COMPOSER־ PIANIST
A Humorous Song
“MOO-OO”
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