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Musical Courier 1895-11-06: Vol 31 Iss 818, 1895
54 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 21. See the scan on archive.org.
1First Symphony Society Concert.
2The Symphony Society gave its first concert of the season in Carnegie Hall, New York city, last Saturday night. The public rehearsal took place Friday afternoon. The program was this:
4Symphony II., in C minor……………………………Tschaiikowsky
5Andante Sostenuto; Allegro Vivo.
6Andantino Marziale, Quasi Moderato.
7Scherzo: Allegro Molto Vivace.
8Finale: Moderato Assai; Allegro Vivo.
9Air, Esclarmonde………………………………………Massenet
10Mme. de Vere-Sapio.
11Suite de Ballet, from………………………………….Rameau
12Acante et Céphisse (1751).
13Musette.
14Rigaudon et Menuett. First time.
15Concerto for violin, with orchestra……………………Lalo
16Andante: Allegro.
17Andantino.
18Allegro con Fuoco.
19M. Marsick.
20Prelude to Act II., Guntram………………………….Richard Strauss
21(Feast of victory at the court of the Duke.)
22New; first time.
24Walter Damrosch conducted.
25Dr. Dvorák once made a sweeping criticism of Tschaiikowsky's orchestral works to the writer.
26"'Tschaiikowsky," said he, "is not a symphonist; he is a great variationist. He writes beautiful suites which he calls symphonies."
27After listening to the symphonies in F minor, E minor and B minor, this seems an unjust estimate, but there is much in the C minor symphony to justify the worthy Bohemian's remark. At least two of its movements are not symphonic in character. The first movement, the strongest, is very Russian in thematic quality. The entire movement is characterized by a bizarre freedom, even recklessness. But there can be no doubt about the skill of its maker. The fantastic "durchführungsatz" and the melancholy beauty of the opening—and very Slavic theme—are evidences of the great Tschaiikowsky who was to come later.
28He omits the slow movement and marches us to the lilting rhythms of Raff and Gounod. Do you remember the little march in the second act of Gounod's Romeo and Juliet? You hear it in this symphony. The harmonies are of course more piquant, and the Russian composer wields a marvelous color brush. It is a clever movement, but hardly weighty enough material for symphonic treatment. As for that, neither is the banal march in Raff's Lenore.
29The Scherzo that follows is of the Saint-Saëns style. It reveals plenty of spirit, and there is the diabolic, riotous energy which pricks the nerves, yet never strikes fire in our souls. The entire work leaves one rather cold. The finale is very charming and the variation making genius of the composer peeps out. The movement has the whirl and glow of some wild dance mood, and over all Tschaiikowsky has cast the spell of his wondrous orchestration. In the work are the potentialities which were realized in his later symphonic works. It is our beloved Tschaiikowsky but as yet in precipitation. In style immature, there is much groping after effects—effects which he used with such a sure touch in Hamlet, Francesca and Romeo et Juliette. Those piano staccato chords for the brass choir, a genuine mannerism, are already in evidence, and his fondness for the chromatic scale used contrapuntally may be noted. The work has not been heard in New York since 1889. Dr. Leopold Damrosch gave it first in December, 1883.
30Madame de Vere-Sapio is a welcome visitor. She was an artist when she left us in search of new musical continents to conquer. She has planted her victorious standard on the Continent and in England and returns more mellowed, her voice richer, rounder, and her style as brilliant as ever. She sang the Massenet aria—a labored, artificial affair—with supreme finish. Her lovely voice, so crystalline in quality, and her musical phrasing were alike admirable, and Madame Sapio has added a new artistic arrow to her quiver. She has grown more dramatic and sings with much more sweep and breadth than formerly.
31Marsick made his initial bow to an American audience at the Friday afternoon concert. He is a violinist of impeccable style, technic and musical intelligence. His ideals are diametrically the opposite of the Neo-Belgian school.
32He carves for you perfect cameos in tone. His tone is not so large as it is sweet, pure and penetrating. He is poetic—using the word in its commonly accepted manner—rather than dramatic. He is not Ysaye, because he is Marsick, and yet he played the Bach chaconne as an encore piece on Saturday evening in a most severe and sculptural style.
33It was a great, noble, austere performance and a surprise, as the Lalo concerto is a composition that demands so many qualities of a player the exact converse of classic. Yet after a most finished reading of this difficult concerto M. Marsick astonished us by his versatility. It would perhaps have been wiser if he had selected a Vieuxtemps concerto for his entrance solo. He is the purest exponent of the French school of violin playing alive. His left hand is surprisingly nimble and his surety in double stopping remarkable. The purity of his harmonics, the ease with which he plays octaves, skips and his clearness in velocity passages and staccati are wonderful. Altogether Marsick has more than fulfilled our high expectations.
34At the Friday rehearsal he played for encore an adagio from a gypsy suite, by Wormser, which gave us his measure as an interpreter of romantic music. His cantabile was charming and velvety at both the concerts of the Symphony Society, and also his wonderful performance of the Vieuxtemps concerto last Sunday night stamp Marsick as an artist of the first rank.
35The other orchestral number worthy of especial mention was the excerpt from Richard Strauss' Guntram, a heroic music drama of the Wagnerian pattern, which was produced at Weimar, May, 1894. It was the prelude to Act II., A Feast of Victory, that Mr. Damrosch played. It proved to be a brilliant piece of writing—Strauss is a past grand master in the art of instrumentation—replete with vibratile excitement and cleaving rhythms. A stirring page of music! The next concerts of the Symphony Society occur January 3 and 4, 1896.
36The young composer-pianist Howard Brockway created an excellent dual impression as composer first, then pianist. He played a ballade of his own in F, betraying the Chopin influence in form and scope, but with fresh thematic material of its own skillfully and interestingly treated and bearing the promise of larger things in the future. He has ideas, this young man, and a refined musicianship which are bound to tell seriously before long. He does not pose as a pianist, but he plays a certain genre of poetic and graceful music with delicious sympathy and taste and an ethereal touch which a host of virtuosi might envy. He made a pronounced success.
37At the Duke's Wedding.
38To the Editor of The Tribune:
39SIR—Announcement is made that the rector of St. Thomas' Church has arranged for vocal music at the approaching nuptials of Miss Vanderbilt with the Duke of Marlborough. Among the chants or songs is announced the Sixty-seventh Psalm, God be Merciful Unto Us and Bless Us, &c. I would like to know if this not the song chanted by the Huguenots jointly as each one of their number was beheaded by the severity and cruelty of Catherine de Medici, the Duc de Guise and his party at Amboise. What was the date of this occurrence and was it not the first time the Psalm is recorded as being chanted at a ceremony? Is there any good picture or representation of Amboise, the scene of this Protestant (Huguenot) massacre, and where can it be seen? Is this song exactly suited to a wedding ceremony? Your reply will greatly oblige
40A TRIBUNE READER.
41New York, November 2, 1895.
42In answer to "Tribune Reader," the Sixty-seventh Psalm, translated in French by Clement Marot about 1559, was chanted by the Huguenot prisoners at the castle of Amboise as they were brought out for execution. Each prisoner as led to the block chanted it with his comrades, beginning with Jean Louis Alberic, Baron de Raunay, the first executed, and ending with Michael Jean Louis, Baron de Castelnau Chalosse, the last of the group of Huguenot noblemen, who sang it alone as he walked to the scaffold for execution. The date was the spring of 1560. There is no previous record known to us of the chanting of the psalm at a public ceremonial other than church worship. It is probable that it had been used in church services. Hence these Protestant noblemen were familiar with it.
43A fine large picture of Amboise is hanging in the cabin of the new boat Annex, of the Pennsylvania route between Brooklyn and Jersey City.
44As to the final question of the song being suited to a wedding ceremony, the Protestant Episcopal Church leaves the selection of songs in ceremony not part of the prescribed church worship to the rector or official, who judges of its propriety.—Tribune.
45Mr., not Mrs., Bjorksten.—Mr. Theo. Bjorksten will conduct a choral class in connection with the Reformed Church on the Heights, Brooklyn, during the winter.
46Amelia Heineberg.—Miss Amelia Heineberg, an accomplished piano soloist, pupil of Prof. Heinrich Barth, of Berlin, has just arrived in New York from Europe. Miss Heineberg has a large classical repertory and will be heard as soon as arrangements for her appearance have been perfected.
47First Carri Concert.—The first concert of Messrs. Ferdinand and Hermann Carri, assisted by Mr. Carl Schoner, viola, and Mr. Philip Egner, 'cello, will take place in Chickering Hall on Tuesday evening, November 12. A new quartet for piano and strings by Mr. Hermann Carri will be performed; also the Schumann quartet in E flat, op. 47.
48New Choral Club.—A new club, to be known as the Alliance Musical Society, has been organized in Brooklyn under the direction of Mr. Carl Fiqué. The chorus will be a mixed one, and secular works of the highest class will be the music studied. Rehearsals will take place every Monday evening in Wissner Hall under Mr. Fiqué. The following directors have been appointed for the first year: George B. Abbott, Carl Fiqué, Myron C. Kelsey, Otto Wissner, Silas B. Dutcher, Hiram W. Hunt, Charles N. Davidson, James P. Philip, F. C. Raynor, J. H. Lau, Conrad L. Meyer, H. J. Lee, Thomas A. Penner, Charles F. Moody, George Hadden, Joseph R. White, Gilbert Mathewson and E. H. Colell.
49Fifth Popular Concert.
50The fifth popular concert, which took place in Carnegie Hall on Sunday night last, found Walter Damrosch at his desk for the last time at these affairs prior to his operatic tour. Marsick, the French violinist; Howard Brockway, the American composer and pianist, and Miss Sophie Traubmann, soprano, an American girl who has just returned after an absence of some years, and a recent addition to the Abbey & Grau opera, were the soloists.
51The program was doubled by encores from all the soloists, but Mr. Damrosch did not allow his energies to flag, and conducted his own interspersed numbers with earnest force and sympathy. The Siegfried Sounds in the Forest and Tschaiikowsky's Andante Cantabile were among the best numbers played by the orchestra, which closed the program with the dramatic 1812 overture of Tschaiikowsky.
52There was no escaping the fact that Marsick was the hero of the evening with the audience. The house stormed with applause for him, and beyond doubt to earn it, while playing with his approved delicacy and polish. There was some diablerie in his performance of the Scherzo Tarantelle of Wieniawski, and two small compositions of his own were played with delicate feeling, and of course the superior technical polish which stamps all his work. Through a misfortune in forgetting the orchestral partition Marsick did not bring on his cheval de bataille, the Vieuxtemps concerto, until the second part of the program, when by a dazzlingly brilliant performance he aroused the already well fed house to a fresh appetite for music played like this.
53Miss Sophie Traubmann, with a voice large, brilliant and dramatic more than sympathetic in quality, sang the Titania air from Mignon with nervous haste, through which she evidently failed to do herself full justice. The voice is of valuable range and resonant timbre, but the singer needs restraint. Control rather than expansion of methods might make an artistic singer of Miss Traubmann. She would also be benefited by singing more in Italian. She gave the Mignon air in German, and sang a song for encore in an English with a heavy Teutonic flavor.
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