June 14, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
58
MOSCOW’S FIRST SYMPHONIC ENSEMBLE WITHOUT CONDUCTOR
ATTAINS A HIGH DEGREE OF ARTISTIC PERFECTION
SOUTHERN BEAUTY TO JOIN OPERA CHORUS. “Wins Way to Opera with Untrained Voice.” This is the way that the Keystone View Company, photographers, headed the caption which accompanied the above photograph, and the rest of the caption was so elaborate a specimen of romantic English that it is printed in full, responsibility for the facts being left to the Keystone firm: “Mrs. Fanille Davies Baird of Atlanta, Ga., a member of one of the oldest and most aristocratic families of the South, who surprised herself and her friends by being taken on for the Metropolitan Opera Chorus. Mrs. Baird has an untrained soprano voice which has charmed Atlanta society for years. When she slipped into the doors of the opera house, there were hundreds with trained voices waiting, but she was one of the fifty chosen. The society woman will give up her butterfly existence and work hard to reach her goal.”
man), Down in the Forest (Ronald), and Oh, Didn’t It Rain (Burleigh). Together with Evan Prosser, tenor, she sang a duet from Parry’s opera, Blodwen.
De Luca Engaged for the West
Giuseppe De Luca, baritone of the Metropolitan Opera, has^ been engaged for a series of concerts in California during the month of October, 1924. De Luca is now resting in Rome, after a season of seventy-eight appearances (opera and concert).
This organization was called the First Symphonic Ensemble. After a year’s work together they have proved that in accompanying, as well as in united playing, they can keep perfect rhythm and give excellent artistic interpretations to orchestral masterpieces without the aid of a conductor.
As far as the mere technical functions of a conductor are concerned he can now be dispensed with. As to the musical rendition, however, it was necessary to have the parts thoroughly explained to each member by a leader. This new system of playing necessarily calls for the invention of new technical aids, the first of which must be a more exact system of printing music with more detailed indications for execution. Until such a system is invented, the task of orchestral players without a conductor will be exceedingly difficult. Nevertheless, in twelve regular concerts, works of Beethoven, Wagner, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Scriabin, etc., were performed with a high degree of artistic excellence. The new movement appealed to the public and won its sympathies. The critics, however, were divided into pros and cons, some lively differences of opinion being the result.
V. Belaiev.
Graveure had to give several extras before the auditors were satisfied.	--------- F. C.
Suzanne Keener Always Singing Somewhere
“But I want a short vacation sometime,” insists Suzanne Keener, the coloratura soprano. Local managers, however, are continually persuading her to sing, so she is 'accepting only engagements that involve very little travel. Miss Keener had been expecting to spend the summer abroad, but the date of sailing was postponed from time to time, and it now seems that she will remain in this country for she has engagements throughout the summer.
More than five hundred applications for Miss Keener for next season have been received by Manager R. E. Johnston, many of which are for re-engagements.
Scudder School Commencement
At the commencement exercises last Thursday of the Scudder School for Girls, 244-248 West Seventy-second street, pupils of the new music department took part in the program for the first time. Pupils of Theodore Van Yorx, tenor; Gustav Dannreuther, violinist; Paul Kefer, cellist, and Frederick Schlieder, organist of St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church, participated. Winifred Abell is director of the school and in addition to the teachers aforementioned, Mme. Adele Laeis Baldwin, Victor Biart, and Mildred Dilling, harpist, are also on the faculty. Sixty-three students were graduated at these exercises.
Erna Cavelle Sings at The Breakers
Erna Cavelle, soprano, was the outstanding artist at a concert on May 29 at The Breakers Hotel in Atlantic City. Miss Cavelle, who enjoys much popularity in Atlantic City, again won the hearts of her hearers. She sang with great charm J’ai Pleuré en Rêve (Hue), Ouvre Tes Yeux Bleues (Massenet), Chanson Norvégienne (Fourdrain), Do Not Go, My Love, (Hageman), The Moon Drops Low (Cad-
Moscow, May 1.—According to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, conducting is the “art of directing the simultaneous performance of several players or singers by the use of gesture.” History shows us that there have been various methods of conducting. Our present epoch is that of the virtuoso conductor who requires, first of all, an orchestra of first-rate technical ability and thorough discipline, but at the same time one subservient to his demands as well as to his caprices, however unexpected or strange they may be. For him the orchestra must be quite passive and deprived of its own will constituting nothing else than an animated musical instrument sensitive to the highest degree.
This state of affairs instinctively provoked a protest among Russian orchestral musicians, and following a plan of L. Zeitlin, professor of violin in the Moscow conservatory, an orchestra was formed which had for its principal object the training of the entire body so that it would become musically sensitive enough for each member to be able to execute his part of even the most complicated works without the aid of a leader. In other words they aimed to perfect an orchestra that would be able to play like a string quartet.
Doris Doe in Recital
June 5, in her Riverside Drive studio, Sibyl Sammis Mac-Dermid presented Doris Doe, contralto, a charming artist with a voice of range and volume under good control. Before a ־select audience of invited guests and in demonstration of her versatility, Miss Doe was heard in the following numbers: Lungi Dal Caro Bene, Secchi; Le Violette, Scar-letti; Celle que je prefre, Fourdrain; Le Miroir, Ferrari; Je Pleure en Reve, Hue; The Plow, Thou Art Like Unto a Flower, Merza, Louis Baker Phillips; La Vague le Cloche, Duparc; Fulfillment, Heart o’ Me, My Luv Is Like the Red, Red Rose, James G. MacDermid.
Mrs. MacDermid will continue teaching in New York throughout the summer and on the evening of June 26 will present Mabel Kraus, soprano of St. Louis, in recital.
Frances Foster Teaches Openshaw Ballad
The following letter shows how successful Openshaw’s ballad, Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses, has proven with Frances Foster, prominent teacher here in New York:
I am using Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses constantly in my studio, and two of my artist pupils are featuring it on their programs— Maisie L’Estrange, who is using it with success in vaudeville and Carl Bender, tenor, who uses it in concert with equal success.
Yours very sincerely,
(Signed) Frances Foster.
Graveure in Copenhagen
Copenhagen, May 25.—The American singer, Louis Graveure, recently gave a recital in Copenhagen. He scored great success, less perhaps by his execution, which in our Scandinavian temperate latitudes seemed somewhat too strongly underlined, than by his extraordinarily well trained, beautiful and warm baritone. In listening to Mr. Graveure we were reminded of the famous Swedish court-singer, John Forsell, who was a few years ago the most idolized concert and opera baritone of the Scandinavian North. Mr.
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