MUSICAL COURIER
June 14, 1923
32
tiptoe-dancing, yet their instruction is palpably a purely physical affair, and the mission of dancing as an expressional art is not even being intimated to them. It is a painful experience to see so much time and—in some cases—talent wasted upon so hopelessly conventional and unproductive an undertaking. And more painful still to think that billions are being wasted upon the maintenance of this useless ballet school at the Staatsoper, which might more profitably be invested upon important operatic productions.
The staging and costumes indeed were marvellous at the recent production of the Staatsoper’s ballet, given at the Redoutensaal and purporting to show the development of the dancing art from the days of Couperin and Rameau to our time. There were four ballets, including waltzes of Johann Strauss and Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye, the last named being the unfortunate feature of the evening, owing to the decidedly tasteless stage business and scenery. The other three ballets were beautifully produced, and their effect was simply ravishing in the glorious old Redoutensaal. No wonder the Staatsoper has since received offers to take these four ballets on tour to Switzerland and France. The evening on the whole was a revelry of color and light. As for the dancing itself—one had better not speak of it.
Paul Bechert.
Mrs. Wilson-Greene Announces Dates
Washington, D. C., June 6.—A superlative list of attractions is offered by Katie Wilson-Greene for the coming season in the national capital. The following artists have been definitely engaged, while others are yet in negotiation: October 29, Bori; November 9, Salvi and the Duncan Dancers; 16, Cherkassky; 22, Hofmann; 23, Alda; 27, Matzen-auer and Whitehill; Dec. 3, De Pachman; 7, Homer; 14, D’Alvarez; Jeritza, date to be announced later; January 11, McCormack; 18, Braslau; 25, Seidel; February 6, Kreis-ler; 15, Hempel in a Jenny Lind recital; 20, Rachmaninoff; 29, Gabrilowitsch; 26, Heifetz; Galli-Curci, March 7; Schipa, 14; Elman, 28. There will also be five concerts by the New York Symphony Orchestra under Mrs. Greene's local direction, on October 23, November 13, December 11, January 15 and February 19, with Samaroff, Enesco, Casals, Crooks and Bruno Walter as guest artists.
In Baltimore Mrs. Greene will present the following: De Pachmann, November 12; Rachmaninoff, November 22; Garden, December 7; McCormack, December 14; Paderewski, date to be announced later; Hempel in a Jenny Lind recital, January 7; D’Alvarez and Gerardy, January 21; Kreisler, February 7; Galli-Curci, February 18; Elman, March 27. The New York Symphony Orchestra will appear on October 24, November 14, December 12, January 16 and February 20, with the same soloists that have been engaged for Washington.
The Richmond concerts sponsored by Mrs. Greene will include: Kreisler, February 8; Paderewski, date to be announced later; Hempel in a Jenny Lind recital, November 20; Elman, March 26; Cherkassky, date to be announced later.	T. F. G.
Port Clinton Choral Society Ends Season
Port Clinton, Ohio, May 28.—-The Port Clinton Choral Society gave its fifth concert on the evening of May 7. The program consisted of several miscellaneous numbers and a cantata entitled Naccochee, by James R. Gillette. The assisting artists were June Elson Kunkle, soprano, of Columbus, O., and Clarence Russell Ball, tenor, of Toledo. This society was organized in February, 1921, an outgrowth of the singing of Christmas carols by a community choir. Under the able leadership of its conductor, Olive Christy Kennedy, the organization has made remarkable progress in the two years and a half of its existence._ Although Port Clinton is a town of only about 3,800 inhabitants the society has nearly one hundred members and has attracted considerable attention from the musical circles of nearby cities who have commented most favorably on the splendid work which it is doing. It is also proud of the fact that ever since its organization it has been able to finance itself, closing each year with a balance in the treasury.	O. C. K.
Arthur Rubinstein Plays New Works
Arthur Rubinstein, the pianist, who will return to the United States in October for a tour to the Pacific Coast, recently played a program of new piano works for the first time in Paris. These compositions consisted of Stravinsky’s sonata, Petrushka, founded on the ballet of that name; Promenade, by Poulenc, and pieces by Falla and Szymanowski, all of which were written especially for Rubinstein and dedicated to him.
Peralta in Aida at Polo Grounds
Frances Peralta, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, will be heard in the open air Aida at the Polo Grounds on June 20. She has probably sung with more al fresco opera companies than any other soprano. Mme. Peralta participated in many open air productions on the Coast and later appeared in similar performances in St. Louis. Last season she was leading dramatic soprano with the Ravinia Park Opera in Chicago.
Rethberg Returning
Elisabeth Rethberg, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, will return to this country on June 26 to appear with the Ravinia Park Opera Company in Chicago.
VIENNA CELEBRATES SECOND
ANNUAL REGER FESTIVAL
German Composer’s Works Arouse Great Enthusiasm—International Society Makes Vienna Debut—Giorgio Polacco Conducts Walkiire—Roland Hayes and Huberman Outstanding Soloists
in these columns. Surrounded as it was by two much more moderate compositions—a strongly Wagnerian one-movement string quartet by Walter Klein, and a rather operatic piano quintet by Benno Sachs—this “atonal” piece sounded daringly modern. Yet, having previously heard the sonata in a private circle, your correspondent found little difficulty in following its intricate thematic texture; the second movement of the work especially sounds beautiful and is full of real rhythm and swing.
Polacco As a Wagnerian Conductor.
Two somewhat "exotic” visitors have created a lasting impression here, and both came, more or less directly, from the U. S. A. : Sig. Giorgio Polacco, the Chicago Civic Opera’s famous chief, and Roland Hayes, the justly famous negro tenor. Polacco, who had stopped off here casually to conduct a more or less improvised performance of Aida at the Volksoper, soon found out that he had come to stay, for a while at least. He spent more than a week here, and he was about the busiest man in town, seeing friends (and even relatives who suddenly bobbed up to greet their famous namesake), hearing concerts and operas, and receiving artists eager for a Chicago engagement. And he is to return for Director Schalk has invited him to conduct the Verdi Requiem at the Staatsoper in June.
The pièce de resistance of the Chicago conductor’s stay here was a performance of Die Walküre at the Volksoper, with Polacco at the desk. It was the outcome of numberless painstaking rehearsals (of an accuracy quite unusual at that theater, according to the verdict of all participants) and it proved a small sensation. Though Sig. Polacco’s reading of the score may not have been “traditional” (horrible word!) at all times, it surely disclosed all the music there is in it. He dwelt upon the cantabile passages with a vengeance, and the dramatic climaxes had all the crashing force of a Verdian stretta.
Triumphs For Roland Hayes And Huberman.
Polacco’s memorable Walküre has taught the Viennese the lesson (long familiar to New Yorkers since the days of Toscanini) that it does not necessarily take a German to conduct Wagner with authority and genuine artistic spirit. But a still stranger experience was held in store for them by Roland Hayes, the remarkable negro, who sings Schubert or Brahms with a perfection of German diction and an understanding of their innermost meaning which is truly baffling. I do not recall ever having heard Du bist die Ruh sung with a more lovely legato and a more masterly repose. Coleridge-Taylor’s Onaway, Awake was of course flesh of his own flesh, and the whimsically plaintive Ne!rro spirituals (all Vienna has fallen in love with them) disclosed the centuries-old grief, which is the inheritance of the Negro race, in a touching manner. Hayes’ mezza voice is bewitching and more than makes up for a certain harshness disclosed in occasionally guttural high forte tones. The sensational success which fell to this singer (and which was infinitely more than a surface sensation) resulted in a second concert, given before a sold-out and enthusiastic house.
The return of Bronislaw Huberman, as always, was one of the towering. events of the year. His admirers here are legion, and in fact, as far as the Vienna verdict is concerned, Huberman is easily the star among violinists. The two concerts originally announced and given to overflowing halls were followed by two more recitals, and at least one more appearance this season is practically assured. Huberman has matured remarkably on his American tours. Formerly he was the violinist of the adagio movements, meaning the “poet among violinists;” he has now gained in virile strength and analytical abilities to an astonishing degree.
Karsavina—And The Vienna School.
On the whole, it will be seen that this has been a month of sensations. Nor is the list of recent sensations complete without allusion to the re-appearance of Tamara Karsavina, who came back here after an absence of some twelve years. She created a stir here, then, with Nijinsky as her partner, but, notwithstanding all her dazzling qualities, the sensation has somewhat faded since. She is, if possible, even more perfect technically than she was then. But memories of Pavlowa loom up, and in her shadow Karsavina was a slight disappointment. Withal, hers is tiptoe-art, and her limited repertory, just like her somewhat frozen smile, smack of the mechanical. There is, in her interpretation of Saint-Saëns’ Swan, little of the elusive poetry and etherial beauty which Pavlowa lends to this old favorite, and the flame of Karsavina’s art, while it shines brightly, gives little warmth to the spectators. Her handsome young partner, Pierre Vladimiroff, completely disappears besides such artists as Nijinsky or Mordkin. After all, one wonders whether the Russian school, as exemplified by Karsavina, is not a little obsolete by now.
_ The answer to this question is decidedly in the affirmative when applied to the Vienna school of ballet art. No more pitiful exhibition of conventional hopping could be imagined than the recent semi-public productions of the Staatsoper’s ballet school pupils, ranging from little youngsters to grown-up (very grown-up!) dancers. These people, to be sure, are taught all the rules of body exercise and
Vienna, May 15.—The Reger Festivals of the German Reger Society are an institution parallel to the annual Brahms Festivals of the Brahms Society and were inaugurated with great success in Breslau last year. Like the initial one, this second festival has taken place in the presence of the composer’s widow and prominent disciples both in Austria and Germany. Its success again was such as to invite speculation as to the great and still growing vogue of Max Reger and Gustav Mahler as compared to the unchangingly cold attitude encountered by these two composers in Anglo-Saxon countries, and particularly America.
The problem is not a simple one, since either one of the two countries—Germany or America—must be fundamentally wrong in the matter. With the serious German musician, Reger and Mahler (and Bruckner may well be added to the list) are classics pure and simple, and to doubt their greatness is considered nothing short of heresy. The one explanation possible is that Mahler’s deep naivete, or Bruckner’s fervently mystic piety, as expressed in their gigantic works, are too essentially Teuton to appeal to the more practical and wide-awake American mentality.
With Reger the case seems much the same. To Americans, music is too essentially a matter of the senses to allow of their taking to the brooding fancy, the architectural ingenuity and the baroque ornamentation of Reger’s music, which (notwithstanding any protest) is nothing less than Bach’s idiom translated into the more intellectual language of our time.
Four Days of Reger.
The four days’ Reger Festival of the German Max Reger Society, which took place here in the presence of many visitors from Germany, among them the composer’s widow, gave a fair survey of the enormous productiveness of this man who seems to have had the astonishing capacity of writing a half dozen fugues between two uncouth jokes or two huge glasses of Bavarian beer. There was an organ concert by Franz Schütz, a chamber music evening given by the Mairecker-Buxbaum Quartet, and two orchestral concerts, enlisting the services of the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Anna Erler-Schnaudt, contralto, and Leopold Reichwein, who accomplished the stupendous feat of conducting these, as all his other concerts, completely from memory.
Enthusiasm ran high after the closing number of the festival—Four Tone Poems, inspired by paintings of Böck-lin—which are of such sublime beauty as to make one wonder at America’s judgment. But, whatever the attitude of foreign countries may be, there can be no doubt of the deep love and esteem in which Reger is held by Central European music lovers. Owing to the present economic conditions, attendance from Germany did not come up to the expected total; but the Vienna public crowded the orchestral concerts, and artistically the festival was an unprecedented success.
The Contempories Begin.
The Vienna branch of the International Society for Contemporary music has made its debut at last—late, but not too late. Rather too early, a pessimist might even be inclined to say, for Vienna is a particularly bad soil for progressive ideas in all things, and especially so in musical affairs. Not that conditions in other countries are ideal. Only yesterday Bruno Walter, just back from American success and brimful of enthusiasm over the wonderful qualities of American orchestras in general and Mr. Stokowski’s Philadelphia organization in particular, had a few interesting things to relate on his attempts to enforce Arnold Schöin-berg’s Verklärte Nacht upon a Rome audience a few months ago. Nine-tenths of the piece was drowned in a tremendous uproar mingled of catcalls, whistling, screaming and a few scarce signs of approval which at times rose to such dynamic .strength as to all but frustrate Walter’s attempts to keep his brave men together. And Arnold Rosé, fresh from his Italian tour, reported a similar reception for one of Schönberg’s string quartets.
So it was that the first concert of the International Society’s Austrian section, took place under most difficult outward conditions. The hall harbored merely a handful of people—some real enthusiasts among them who had come with an open heart and mind—and of the “big” critics, only two rose to the occasion. The program, indeed, was far from excitingly radical, opening with Busoni’s excellently worked but none-too inspired toccata, and comprising some early Schönberg songs, the infinitely “atmospheric” Chansons de Bilitis of Debussy, and Artur Honegger’s violin sonata, which, with its César Franckian influence, bears all the earmarks of a promising opus 1. The spice of the evening was furnished by Béla Bartok’s suite, op. 14, his Nenie No. 2, and the Ballad from his Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs. Emmy Heim was the vocalist, Christa Richter the violinist of the occasion, but the lion’s share fell to that untiring exponent of the unusual in music, Friedrich Wührer, who played the piano part in the Honegger sonata, as well as the Busoni and Bartók pieces, with remarkable virility. Two days previously, Wührer, together with Mary Dickenson-Auner, had given the first public performance here of the violin sonata, op. 5, by Paul A. Pisk, to which casual reference has previously been made
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