Scan 22
Musical Courier 1894-12-12: Vol 29 Iss 770, 1894
80 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026. Printed page 21. See the scan on archive.org.
1fluential" morning paper who was very sharply called down because his "notices" of a certain series of performances stopped the supply of tickets to the editor's family.
3And now some of the managers have taken the cue. They flatly refuse tickets unless the notices are long and kindly. This is a serious matter for the editors. We knew of one theatre which gave up seven private boxes in one week to the editor of a single morning paper. The result of all these influences is that music criticism—and dramatic, too—is snowed under. The maintenance of judicial purity and a high standard of thought in the columns of the daily papers is beyond the control of the critics, who must obey the orders of their editors or resign. That music criticism is as good as it is in the dailies is due to the constant, determined and fearless struggle of the critics themselves against their own employers.
5FEMININE CHOPIN INTERPRETERS.
7THE following eloquent protest comes to us from Kate Ockleston-Lippa, a well-known pianist, now a resident of Alleghany, Pa. She writes:
9"In THE MUSICAL COURIER of November 7 four columns of valuable space are worthily devoted to an analysis, more or less, of Chopin's works from the least to the greatest.
11"Only a clever writer could have so caustically withered the would-be 'Chopin players,' or so clearly expressed his own appreciation of the great composer's works throughout; it was a masterly effort, but he permitted his indignation to lead him a little astray when he feels impelled to state that 'if he were the Sultan of Life he would sentence to a vat of boiling oil any woman who presumed (?) to touch a note of Chopin.'
13"'Oh my sisters! is the worthy scribe in earnest? and can it be true that for us Chopin's 'Paradise of Tone' must remain a sealed book because we cannot conceive the beauties which are to be found therein with feminine understanding? We are even accused of 'decking the most virile spirit of the age in petticoats and placing upon his head that thing of beauty, a Parisian bonnet.' I have read somewhere (possibly in Liszt's 'Life of Chopin') that, of all music, none is so strongly suggestive to the imagination of the 'elegance of the drawing room;' with 'light subdued and redolent with dainty perfume, in which we hear the soft rustle of satin-gowned women, the murmuring of subdued voices, and yet again the rippling of merry laughter,' &c., as the music of Chopin.
15"'Does this appeal to our sex as fit interpreters?
17"'In all my years of study, concert work and teaching, the fact of Chopin's music being particularly suitable to the hands and temperament of a woman has been an abiding one, hitherto undisturbed by any controversy on the point.
19"'But woman or man must be a failure as Chopin's interpreter unless he or she be imbued with the spirit which dominates all his music, viz.: A dreamy sadness, which enraptures; a playfulness, which fascinates, and a grandeur which I admit a woman has the power of feeling rather than expressing, but when she fails in this it is from sheer lack of physical force—not because she does not understand.
21"'The most beautiful Chopin players I have ever heard, either in this country or in Europe, have been women (Mlle. Janotha and Mme. Esissopf). Where physical force and endurance are required men must always have the advantage of us, but for that indescribable charm which seems to belong exclusively to Chopin's music in the hands of a true interpreter.
23"'I can remember just one man who possesses it—Pachmann; many pianists counted technically greater than he play Chopin, but fail and leave the faintest impression on the minds of the listeners, or give us a proof that man only can find the key to the mysteries of his music.
25"'As for the 'young person' who, the writer dictates, should not be allowed to play Chopin at all, I would respectfully beg leave to remind him that 'the young' should, in art as in other things, be leniently dealt with and criticised; if he has from time to time been subjected to the martyrdom of hearing vapid interpretations of what should be soul-satisfying melodies he should not condemn all our sex for this unpardonable affront to 'his majesty'; but we would beseech him to seek out his ideal Chopin player, send him on a tour of the States, and we will assure him a warm welcome in Pittsburg. Then we will telegraph to New York if, in our humble opinion, his choice of a masculine mind has successfully grappled with the mysteries and beauties of Chopin, or, failing in this, we women would consider where he should be consigned to. There is plenty of oil in our neighborhood."
27The article referred to was entitled "The New Chopin" and appeared in the columns of "The Raconteur." Possibly the writer had been suffering from an unusually hideous dose of Chopin at the hands of some feminine amateur, hence his ungallant grumpiness. Mrs. Lippa has it seems to us the right on her side. There are certain phases of Chopin which are delightful when played by women. Janotha plays Chopin charmingly, but never as did Esissopf when in her prime as a pianist. She has grown careless of late years. During her visit here in 1876 she played superbly. The études and preludes were her stronghold, and she excelled in delineating the sultry passion of the nocturnes and the capricious life of the mazourkas. Alide Topp and Anna Mehlig, who were her predecessors, did not give us Chopin as he is. They were Teutonic readings, not Slavic. The brilliant Teresa Carreno, like the brilliant Sophie Menter, has always excelled in the most masculine music. Liszt is their strong forte, and few male pianists have approached them in tonal volume and impetuosity of style.
29Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler, whose temperamental and technical gifts are on a par with Esissopf's, plays Chopin with great insight. Her rendering of the F minor concerto has been pronounced hors ligne. Pachmann is the most feminine of male interpreters of Chopin's music, and his interpretations of the valse, mazourkas and some of the studies are unapproachable. Yes, there can be no doubt that women play Chopin well, almost as well as men, but not quite as well, and never better. The wholesale denunciation on the part of the "Raconteur" must be set down to either jealousy or rank prejudice. Woman play Chopin delightfully, but never play the greater Chopin as do male pianists.
31RACONTEUR
33HER VIOLIN.
35I would I were her violin,
36To rest beneath her dimpled chin,
37And softly kiss her swan-white throat,
38And breathe my love through every note.
39When o'er my strings her fingers fair
40Should lightly wander here and there,
41The while her flashing bow did press
42My bosom with its swift caress,
43Then would I waken into song
44The rapture that had slumbered long.
45Mine ear against her swelling breast
46Should harken to its sweet unrest,
47And—happy spy!—then should I know
48How, deep beneath that drifted snow,
49A blissful tumult in her heart
50Made all her fluttering pulses start,
51Then that high calm, that maiden grace,
52That meekly proud and peerless face,
53That aureole of sun-bright hair,
54That brow such as the seraphs wear—
55No longer these should baffle quite
56The anxious lover's dazzled sight.
57Ah, would I were her violin,
58That thus her secret I might win.
59—James B. Kenyon, in December Century.
61I HAVE been reading some during the past week. Nothing profound, but something cheering. "Trilby" for the second time. It is a delightful mélange of bad French, indifferent English, a vile prose style and Du Maurier's usual mannered and unnatural drawings. Of course it is the thing to go "daft" about "Trilby" and I went "daft" until a second reading.
63Du Maurier has drawn a wholly impossible character, and I noticed that the moment "Trilby" began to get decent and eschew cigarettes she became tiresome. As for the music talk in the book it is as usual nonsense. Fancy a waiter singing the tone of F minor (F moll)! What extraordinary overtones there must have been to his voice! Of course Svengali and the hypnotizing of "Trilby" into singing Chopin's A flat impromptu is all of a piece. This impromptu of Chopin is not singable, although I heard once upon a time Marcella Sembrich vocalize the first page of Chopin's C sharp minor Fantasy Impromptu. Those were the days when she played a De Beriot fiddle concerto, the E flat polonaise of Chopin, and wound up with Viardot-Garcia's vocal adaptation of Chopin's D major mazourka. That was a feat or a trio of feats that knocked Trilby O'Ferrall's hypnotized virtuosity into smithereens.
65The music talk is cheap in "Trilby," and sentimental to bathos. Du Maurier is on firmer ground when he writes the argot of the painting atelier. But what I principally object to in the book is the very cheap device of that which Ruskin so aptly called the pathetic fallacy. We get too many tears, deaths and "Ben Bolts" (such musical rot), and one chapter sighs for the vanished joys of the preceding, and little Billee is a genius, at least you are told so often that you doubt it. With its Thackeray coloring, its dash of Henri Murger's "Vie en Bohéme," and its impossible art talk, "Trilby" appeals to that great class of readers which views askance the names of George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and George Moore. Its success is ominous. It foretells early decay, as in the case of those two awful literary productions, "Robert Elsmere" and "Ben Hur."
67But if "Trilby" is bourgeois, it is delightful all the same. I think I will read it again this week.
69Svengali is not a nice gentleman. In fact, throughout the book there are thinly disguised slurs at the Jewish race. Surely there never existed such a dirty genius as this same Svengali, whose right name was Adler, we are told.
71And doesn't César Thomson look like the pictures of Svengali? The other night at the Boston Symphony Orchestral concert Svengali looked at the audience with deep eyed regard, and a young woman back of me got scared and left before he began playing the Paganini concerto. I've heard great technical feats from pianists—Pachmann's playing of the G sharp minor study at a dizzy tempo, Joseffy tearing through the Schumann toccata and Godowsky doing at a terrible rate that awful Balkireff "Islamy"—but I think that the greatest virtuoso I ever heard, technically, is the same Svengali Thomson. He frightens me.
73Some paper up in Norwich the other day called Max Heinrich a shaven Svengali, and hinted that Mrs. Heinrich was charmed by his evil eye into singing Schubert, Schumann and Franz so charmingly. I won't deny the evil eye, as Mr. Heinrich has not what might be called an angelic baby stare, but I heard Mrs. Heinrich sing in Philadelphia ten years ago and more, and her husband was not near by to hypnotize her.
75Ah, me! that reminds me of my musical salad days when I heard Charles Jarvis play the entire literature of the piano from Alkan to Zarembski; when Michael Cross gave those never-to-be-forgotten quartet parties at his Race street house; Simon Stern, one of the best amateur violinists in the country; "Abe" Roggenberger at the viola, Sam Murray a faithful "second" and Mr. Cross at the 'cello stand. Lots of music was made and the world to me was melody and moonshine. Occasionally at these parties we descended to beer and oysters "à la Thibault," but as a rule we dwelt upon the heights. Mr. Cross when he wasn't playing the organ was at the piano (I can hear now his purling legato), and when not at that instrument he was playing Romberg 'cello duos with his teacher, Leopold Engelke. He is a versatile fellow.
77Then Max Heinrich would go about Quaker town scandalizing the inhabitants thereof with a dog the size of a large pony, which was named Sedan and had a habit of jumping from second story windows after cats. Max wasn't the artist he is to-day, and I can remember well the first time Schumann's "Ich Grolle Nicht" fell in his hands. He "grölléd" for a week without stopping. He, too, was fond of lots of things. He took up painting at one time, and I found him often at work on hot summer days in his bath tub painting water colors, while around him canary birds fluttered and a long, thin clarinet on four legs (some impossible breed of dog, a cross 'twixt a Dachshund and a Dalmatian hound) bayed at midday moons and shrieked when approached.
79Now we are old, growing old, and smile at such youthful follies. It all came back to me with a copy
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