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Musical Courier 1895-12-25: Vol 31 Iss 825, 1895
62 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 27. See the scan on archive.org.
1hunger for more was not yet appeased, and after six or seven further recalls the artist played one of those gloomy Russian national tunes which are followed by a short dance movement, and then wind up in the former sad strain. He played this strange composition without accompaniment, and his double stopping in it was something wonderful.
3The Philharmonic orchestra contributed to the program some numbers (among which Smetana's symphonic poem, Vyschrad, was new to me) in good performance under Professor Mannstaedt's direction, but their accompaniment of the Mendelssohn concerto was not distinguished for rhythmic precision or good sustenance of the soloist.
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7Following an invitation of the American Legation, I spent my Thursday evening at the annual Thanksgiving dinner of the American colony at the Kaiserhof. Feasting is occasionally preferable to even a good concert, and as the menu was well selected, the wines were excellent, the turkey with cranberries and even the imported sweet potatoes, and the dangerous, because usually doubtful, mince pie, exceedingly palatable, the inner man had every reason to be satisfied. No less was done for the mental comfort of those present, who enjoyed an excellent double speech with a Hoch for the Kaiser and a Hurrah for Grover Cleveland on the part of our esteemed Ambassador, Theodore Runyon; a rousing speech on The Day We Celebrate on the part of a consul whose name has escaped me; some fine patriotic singing by Arthur Van Eweyk, the American baritone, and several other mental refreshments. Being seated between two pretty young ladies, both from Detroit and both pianists, I had no reason to feel dissatisfied, and if they can play only half as well as they can talk I shall have no cause for adverse criticism whenever they will appear in public.
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11The only concert of some importance which took place on Thanksgiving evening was that of Arrigo Serato, from Bologna, a protégé of Etelka Gerster, and another one of the many violin wonders which have lately sprung up. So far the season has been nearly all given to violinists, and I hear that this eighteen year old chap also created a sensation. We shall see what Mr. Abell will have to say on the subject. The Gerster has brought the boy here in person and is very enthusiastic about him.
13After Christmas the pianists will have their say, and I understand from Wolff that no less than thirty-five piano performances will be given in Berlin during January and February, 1896.
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17Heinrich Vogl gave a popular Lieder Abend in the Philharmonie on Friday night and had a good audience. The Munich heroic tenor is no longer a spring chicken, and his voice shows the ravages of time and does not always respond to the efforts and intentions of the singer. If I had Vogl's wealth I should certainly stop singing in public, except for charitable purposes occasionally—for charity covers up a multitude of sins. Many, nay, almost all, artists, however, never know when to stop. It is too bad when they have to continue because they need money, but Vogl is a landed proprietor and a man of means, and he ought to know better than to endanger the well earned reputation he enjoys as one of Germany's greatest tenors. His intentions are, of course, as artistic and as musical as they ever were before, and therefore his conception of such Gesang as Beethoven's Adelaide and Wagner's five poems are still grateful to the mind, if not to the sensuous ear of a musically educated person. Notably these very difficult Tristan studies of Wagner, which can never be well and satisfactorily sung by anybody but a highly musical artist, are still most interesting in Vogl's version, and in one of them, the transcendental poem Schmerzen, mind carried it so far over matter that for a few minutes the artist succeeded in forcing his vocal organ up to the one time glorious ring, and thereby so astonished and delighted his audience that the song was most enthusiastically redeemed.
19The rest of the program consisted of two works by Brahms and a couple of Franz Lieder, as well as two Wagner excerpts, which I could not stay to hear, as I wanted to attend another musical entertainment.
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23This was Florian Zajic's concert in the Singakademie, which was well attended and well worth attending. The concert giver is one of the best local violinists and pedagogues of that instrument. Moreover, he is as fine a virtuoso as he is a musician, and it is greatly to his credit that, being so busy teaching, he still manages to keep up his technic to such fine concert pitch that in this regard alone he would successfully rival the best of the many good violinists who have come before the public this season. Of Zajic's chamber music soirées in conjunction with Gruenfeld I have spoken before, and therefore don't need to mention them on this occasion.
25I willingly missed the Bruch G minor concerto, and I shall also leave the description of Zajic's Beethoven playing, as evidenced in a superb performance of the master's violin concerto, to Mr. Abell, but I want to state here that I am grateful to the concert giver for having met on his program Raff's suite for violin with orchestra in G minor, op. 180. It was the first time in my life that I had a chance to hear this really beautiful, interesting and effective work, and I cannot understand why violinists of ability should not prefer playing a symphonic chef d'œuvre of this description to the hackneyed perennial concertos which form the stock in trade of the limited repertory of most violinists, limited because of the limited literature for their instrument. May be that the technical difficulties in which the work abounds, notably the many spring bow passages, will deter some of the lesser lights from studying this suite, but then they give their time and labor to other compositions which are hardly easier and which have not by far its musical worth and contents.
27In form it is absolutely perfect, the themes are mostly of rare beauty, the workmanship is of the most symphonic and interesting kind, and the orchestration as masterly as can be expected from the composer of the Wald symphony and the man to whom Wagner intrusted the orchestration of his Huldigungs Marsch (originally scored by Wagner for military band). Moreover, Raff's suite is really effective also from a virtuoso standpoint, and Zajic scored with it as brilliant a success as his technically flawless as well as musically noble performance deserved. He was loudly cheered and recalled many times, and when I left the hall he was just getting ready to play his second encore.
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31On Saturday evening, at the Royal Opera House, the annual concert for the benefit of the chorus was given by the chorus, under Weingartner's direction. The concert, which, as I mentioned last week, has been several times postponed, was not, I am sorry to say, as well attended as the purpose, performance and program would seem to have warranted.
33Proceedings opened with the Churchly Festival Overture on Luther's hymn, Ein' feste Berg ist unser Gott, by Otto Nicolai. The work from the pen of the composer of The Merry Wives of Windsor is not as interesting as might be supposed. It is stately, but also stiff, and it lacks above all in that flow of festival spirit and even in the fluency of contrapuntal writing which might be expected in such a composition, probably a pièce de occasion. I have heard the overture before, but only for orchestra. This time, however, it was performed with the aid of the chorus, which strengthens the effect of the Luther hymn portions of the work. On the whole, however, the overture gained little thereby, and the royal orchestra, on the other hand, did not sound as brilliant or as sonorous as it usually does, owing, probably, to the fact that the musicians were wedged in upon the platform between two flanks of choral forces, the dresses of the female portion of which absorb more of the sound waves than one would imagine. This, at least, is the only explanation I can find for the fact that the royal orchestra did on this occasion not sound half as well as it had done at the last symphony concert.
35Prof. Karl Halir, who, I understand, is soon going to quit his position as concert master of the royal orchestra, was the instrumental soloist of the evening, and he gave a scholarly, but by no means a very enthusiastic or enthusiasm awakening, performance of the Brahms violin concerto.
37After that came Reznicek's new Requiem Mass, a work still in manuscript. This young Bohemian has lately come to the fore with his successful opera, Donna Diana, and he is evidently going to become the composer à la mode. Dr. Karl Muck discovered him when Muck was still Kapellmeister for Angelo Neumann, and since last season Weingartner has taken him under his potential wings. The Requiem for chorus, six solo voices and orchestra, was received with enthusiasm by the public, and with spontaneous applause, which is a rare and, as some say, a misplaced and unbecoming demonstration with which to receive a messe des morts. Nearly all of the Berlin criticisms which I have seen condemn the work right out, and yet, although I agree with resident confrères upon the main point, that the Requiem is lacking in homogeneousness of style, I find many things in it to admire, and still more which I greatly enjoyed. It is true, that here and there the operatic, especially in the melodic invention, abounds in Reznicek's Requiem, but so it does in Verdi's Mazzoni requiem, and yet the world has accepted this work as one of the most gifted as well as most inspiring among the creations of the Nestor of the Italian composers.
39Again, it has been said that Reznicek's orchestration is too brilliant for a work of such sombre character, and it is true that in this respect it even outtrivals Berlioz's Messe des Morts. But, then, why was this argument never brought forth against Berlioz' chef d'œuvre! Simply because the effect of the French master's orchestration is overwhelming. In Reznicek the orchestration is wonderful in sonority and beauty of Klangeffekt, and at times it becomes tremendously descriptive, such as in the Dies irae in D minor, which is the most dramatic setting of that dramatic portion of the text which so far known to me. And thus in the Tuba mirum, where, after some exquisite echo effects, the brass develops a power which with far less means equals that of Berlioz in the same portion of the text. Again, nobody can gainsay that Reznicek's use of the solo voices, especially in the grouping of two and two and in the careful shading and contrasting, as well as intermixing with the chorus, is either inartistic or not befitting the text.
41The gem of the solo numbers is the Benedictus, which, as in the Beethoven D minor mass, is set for the baritone solo with violin obligato. It was superbly sung by Betz, and the violin solo splendidly played by Halir. Why chide the public for applauding both the performance and the composition because this composition happens to be a Requiem mass?
43Where I agree, however, with my Berlin colleagues is in the traducing of the composer's intermixing of styles, the sacred and the secular, the oratorio and the opera. His purely operatic and beautifully orchestrated Requiem aeternam he winds up with a double fugue set to the Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison. Another strict fugue is thrown in at the end of the Domine Jesu, and still another one winds up the Hostias, which starts in with an exquisite harp effect.
45But the most derogatory remark and the severest objection I have to the Requiem is an occasional lapse into the vulgar, which reaches its climax at the close of the Agnus Dei, where the six solo voices are alternatively used in an ascending phrase, which sounds exactly like the musical winding up of a German toast with Hoch soll er leben, hoch soll er leben, drei mal Hoch! A composer of such rare abilities and fine instincts as Reznicek should avoid such commonplace, and it is still time to efface this most glaring one, as the work is yet in manuscript.
47As for the performance of the difficult work under Weingartner's direction, the six soloists from the Royal orchestra, Miss Reul, Miss Krainz (Mrs. Goetz was announced, but did not sing), Messrs. Sommer, Alma, Betz and Mocklinger were excellent, albeit Miss Reul has a mezzo and not a soprano voice, and some other singer should have been selected in her stead. The orchestra also was superb, but the hard worked chorus, who had just gone through the multitudinous Ivanhoe rehearsals, were not in all instances up to the high mark they usually attain. Nevertheless, their efforts were acceptable, and even respectable. The composer was present, and at the conclusion of the work was twice called before the audience.
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51The last, but by no means least interesting concert of this interesting musical week took place last night. It was the first concert for the present season of the Wagner Society, of Berlin, and it was well attended, at the Philharmonie.
53The program, which this time was a purely Wagnerian one, again contained some excerpts from Parsifal. My views against the concert performance of portions of Wagner's Swan song have been expressed in The Musical Courier too frequently to need repetition. The fact, however, deserves mention that this time the performance itself, under Professor Mannstaedt's direction, was far superior to the one previously given under the baton of Professor Klindworth. The excerpts consisted of the Vorspiel; the Gralsfeier, commencing with the Verwandlungs music to the end of the first act, and the Parsifal with flower girls episode, from the second act up to the appearance of Kundry. The ending of this scene has been changed for concert performance by Professor Mannstaedt by the addition of a repetition of the graceful flower girls' chorus Komm, Komm! A female chorus had been gathered ad hoc, and did fairly well. The male chorus consisted of members of the Berlin Teachers' Chorus, of Professor Schmidt, and they distinguished themselves in the Gralsfeier scene. Karl Perron, from Dresden, sang the part of Amfortas with beautiful voice and noble sentiment. Emil Severin sang Gurnemanz and the few musical utterances of Titirel respectfully, and Heinrich Ernst, formerly tenor at the Berlin, now member of the Dresden Royal Opera, gave the part of Parsifal in vocally barely satisfactory style. The solo flower girls' music was nicely sung by the ladies, Emily Herzog, Lisbeth Stoll, Elly La Pierre, Amelia Gmür-Harloff, Marie Deppe and Valerie Mertens.
55Heinrich Ernst later on gave the original version of Lohengrin's Gralserzählung, which contains fifty-six closing bars which were afterward excised by Wagner himself and which were never printed. I heard it once before sung by Vogl, and I must again say Wagner was right in cutting the end off. It is true it contains the solution of the secret of the Swan, but it spoils the dramatic climax of the whole opera, Lohengrin's declaration of his Nam' und Art. Ernst, who was not in good voice, sang execrably.
57Perron, on the other hand, scored a big success with Wotan's Abschied, and the concert wound up with a rousing performance of the Kaiser Marsch on the part of the Philharmonic orchestra.
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61Callers at the Berlin headquarters of The Musical Courier in the past week included John Geiger, from Indianapolis, a baritone who is studying with the younger Lamperti, at Dresden; Fred. Bender, from Hamilton, Ohio, a pupil of Professor Wirth, on the violin, and who will return to the United States next week; Frank Harris, from Missouri Valley, Ia., a pupil of Jedliczka, on the piano; William Lavin, the tenor; Emanuel Moor, the composer, and Mr. Arnold Kutner, a tenor from California, who after having studied here with Professor Hey will soon return to his home across the Atlantic. O. F.
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