Scan 28
Musical Courier 1896-12-02: Vol 33 Iss 874, 1896
109 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026. Printed page 23. See the scan on archive.org.
1Metropolitan Opera Musicale.
2THE first of the series of Metropolitan Opera musicales under the direction of Messrs. Ruben & Andrews took place on Tuesday afternoon, November 24, in the new ballroom of the Hotel Waldorf. Emma Eames, Plançon, Mlle. Edyth Le Gierse and Messrs. F. Q. Dulcken and Frank Taft were the artists. This was the program, changed only in one number by Plançon, who announced that owing to a cold he could not sing the Thomas air and gave instead Schumann's Two Grenadiers.
4Prelude and fugue, with choral………….Mendelssohn-Bartholdi (Arranged for piano and List organ by Mr. Ferdinand Quintin Dulcken.)
5Mr. Dulcken and Mr. Frank Taft.
6Le Banc de Pierre……………………………Gounod
7Tout l'Univers obéit à l'Amour. … (First time.)
8M. Pol Plançon.
9Where Blooms the Rose……………………..Clayton Johns
10Madrigal………………………………………Victor Harris
11Mme. Emma Eames.
12Solo harp—
13Valse…………………………………………..Hasselmans
14Mazurka………………………………………Schuecker
15Mlle. Edyth Le Gierse.
16Comment disaient-ils!………………………..Liszt
17April…………………………………………..Goring Thomas
18Mme. Emma Eames.
19Air du Tambour Major………………………..Thomas
20M. Pol Plançon.
21Duo, Pastorale……………………………….Saint-Saëns
22Mme. Emma Eames and M. Pol Plançon.
23Accompanist, Mr. Victor Harris.
25The operatic section of the musicale was represented by Eames and Plançon; so also was public interest. There were other good and artistic things on the program, but operatic luminousness threw them into shadow. The affair had its place in the prosperous atmosphere of a vogue. Dames of fashion sprinkled the handsome ballroom and diffused the strong social aroma pervasively. It seemed a most functional function for the exclusives, and after these every good male vocal artist in town might be found pacing the roomy carpeted rere, which we shall call the foyer. The women singers leavened the rows of chairs. A goodly gathering it was, and an interesting one of art and fashion—to put it more carefully, fashion and art.
27Eames had a warm reception and sang with an infallible purity and sweetness and the phrasing of a feeling and finished artist her group of songs. But she is compressed within a small auditorium and reduced to the accompaniment of a piano. Given her native large environment and support she can be noble, but she is not heard to advantage in a small hall nor within the trammels of a lyric whose import be gentle or gracious or gay. Her voice and methods have gone beyond this, and she is not as are some other artists—adaptive. A dramatic song is her genre, but her voice should be pitted against an orchestra. Her numbers the other day were all of sentiment or lightheartedness and the lovely songstress was in water too shallow for her artistic inclination or stature. Her best number after the Liszt song was the Madrigal of Victor Harris, which she gave con grazia to the charming accompaniment of the composer. It ought to have been a red letter day for Victor playing the accompaniment to his own song, sung by the most popular prima donna in America at this moment, particularly when the clever, musicianly Mantelli, the contralto, kept punctuating the phrases by "Mais, comme il fait bien cet Harris, chanson admirable!"
29For encore Eames gave Delibes' Filles de Cadix, far too light a bit of coquetry for this large-voiced woman with the supreme native poise, which study in perfecting has only made more immobile.
31Plançon sang in the same monotonously impeccable fashion. The Gounod songs are perfunctory efforts of the man of mystic melody and frequent ardent inspiration. The Two Grenadiers was delivered with the usual patriotic outburst at the close, which seems to demand a corresponding outburst from the house and gets it.
33In Mlle. Edyth Le Gierse a sympathetic and delicately finished young artist made her début. She plays with musical feeling and intelligence, while her technic is accurate and smooth. Mlle. Le Gierse invests the harp as a solo instrument with more interest than most, and adds to her gifts a graceful personality.
35The work of Messrs. Dulcken and Taft was good in itself, but went mainly for "playing in" the people. And a large brilliant gathering of people it played in. The initial Metropolitan Opera Musicale was an auspicious event.
37Jeanne Franko Trio.
38THE first concert of this season by the Jeanne Franko Trio—Miss Jeanne Franko, violin; Miss Celia Schiller, piano and Mr. Hans Kronold, 'cello—took place on Friday evening last, November 27, in Steinway Hall. The trio was assisted by Mr. Gerhard Stehmann, baritone, who appeared by permission of Mr. Walter Damrosch. A trio in A minor (first time) by Giuseppe Frugatta and Raff's third trio, op. 155, in A minor, were divided by two songs by Mr. Stehmann, Rubinstein's Sehnsucht and Schumann's Two Grenadiers, which made a program of exactly the proper brevity.
40The name of an Italian on the program looked refreshing in the cause of chamber music. Frugatta, however, did not fulfill our hopes. He has the modern Italian virtue of saying things quickly, but he has not very much to say nor does he express himself in an over-interesting manner. Even fragments of melody are scarce, but his rhythms are attractive and his treatment of the piano markedly pianistic and often brilliant. This piano partition plays a prominent part in the work and was deftly handled by Miss Celia Schiller. Her touch and tone are decisive and clear, her rhythms definite without over-accentuation, her chord playing firm and elastic, and her passage work fluent and distinct. She is an accomplished young pianist.
42Miss Franko played with the authority and ease to which we are accustomed with her. Her treatment of the Adagio was broad and musicianly, and she imbued all her phrases with the full sentiment evoked by the composer.
44Miss Franko is always reliable, and when it comes to virtuosity or velocity is as much at home as in more tranquil measures. Mr. Kronold makes a most capable and sympathetic third in this organization. He has a delightful tone, and his style is polished, but, alas! it was damp as a river bed outside the other night, and the violin and 'cello had caught bronchitis. The usual pure singing Kronold tone was hoarse, and Miss Franko's earnest phrases sounded harshly scraped. It was easy to see, however, that the interpretation was properly conceived and tone quality an accident. Taken collectively this trio makes a precise and sympathetic ensemble.
46The baritone, Mr. Stehmann, has a pure, manly voice, not over-weighty in volume, but clear and resonant in quality. He sings intelligently, with a good deal of strong and earnest rather than poetic feeling. The thickness and throatiness common to German baritones were pleasantly conspicuous by their absence. There was a large audience and plenty of applause.
48Bruno Oscar Klein Concert.
49THE concert to be given by Bruno Oscar Klein in Carnegie Hall, under the direction of Herr Otto Lohse-Klafsky, as already announced in these columns, will present the following works of Mr. Klein, together with excerpts of his successful opera Kenilworth, which was produced with such éclat at Hamburg. The solo pianist will be Mr. Alexander Lambert.
51PART I.
52Concert Overture (in the old style).
53Concertstück, piano and orchestra.
54Scènes de Ballet.
55Poème d'Amour.
56Dialogue (strings only).
57Valse Fantastique.
58Orchestra.
60PART II.
61Excerpts from the opera Kenilworth.
62Prelude.
63Finale Act I. (Amy).
64Amy's Prayer.
65Miss Montefiore.
66Introduction Act III.
67Song of the Storm.
68Aria for tenor.
69Mr. Max Treumann.
70Mr. Charles Kaiser.
71Quintet.
72Grand March.
74Chickering Matinee Musicale.
75THE usual fashionable audience crowding the house was present on Tuesday afternoon last at the Chickering invitation musicale, which took place in Chickering Hall. The following was the program and the list of artists:
76Trio, op. 11, Allegro-Andante-Presto leggiero………….Chaminade
77Piano, violin and 'cello.
78Prologue, Vocal………………………………….R. Leoncavallo
79Adagio, Violoncello……………………………..Kummer
80Piano—
81Aria…………………………………………….Schumann
82Vogel als Prophet……………………………….Chopin
83Valse, op. 70, No. 1…………………………..Chopin
84Italian Gavot………………………………….A. Holmès
85Cuban Dance, No. 3…………………………..Dvorák
86Violin—
87Nocturne………………………………………Van Goens
88Mazurka………………………………………Hubay
89Vocal—
90Madrigal………………………………………Chaminade
91Hymne à Eros………………………………….A. Holmès
92Dumky trio, op. 90, Nos. 1, 2, 3………………..Dvorák
93Piano, violin 'cello.
94Emilio De Gogorza, baritone; Gustav Dannreuther, violin; Emil Schenck, 'cello; Ida Letson Morgan, accompanist, and Richard Hoffman, piano.
96It is a calm, intellectual, but nowadays infrequent pleasure to hear an artist of the genre of Richard Hoffman play. He is a satisfying exponent of that pure, limpid, crystal school of piano playing in which the real genius of the instrument was so eminently fitted. Mr. Hoffman is a finished artist, but the day of his zenith antedated the latter-day school of piled-up tonal masses and would-be orchestral surge and sonority, of which Liszt was the most clamorous apostle. It is a fresh, cool delight to hear Richard Hoffman weave his delicate tracery across a keyboard, play his romantic melodies with pianistic poetry, and seek at no time to split the ears of the groundlings with the showy bombardment of our latest school. He was in good form the other afternoon and played with spirit and the clean decision and delicacy for which he is eminently noted.
98The baritone, Mr. Gogorza, had his light but pure voice overweighted by the Pagliacci prologue. He sings well and has plenty of musical feeling, but is most to be enjoyed in lyric music, which he delivers with finish.
100Messrs. Dannreuther and Schenck contributed their share satisfactorily to a program which passed off smoothly.
102Concert Direction.
103ALL first-class artists' tours conducted and single bookings made in Detroit and elsewhere. A specialty of booking pre-eminent bands and selling dates. Anything in the shape of conducting concerts and musicales in Detroit attended to. The only concert bureau in the city which is well advertised in several amusement papers. Managers of artists are requested to write, letting me know their talent, and those of lecture and concert courses are requested to correspond for terms for my artists, dates, &c. Address John C. Young, Jr., 95 Pitcher street, Detroit, Mich.
105MATI VIOLINS—Two genuine Amati violins—one Hieronymus and the other Nicolas—for sale. Address genuine letters only to "Violin," care of this paper. They are the property of an artist, not of a collector or dealer.
107To Anonymous.
108A SUBSCRIBER from Cincinnati who wishes to know something about Schumann and Schubert can read the editorial columns of this paper of the November 4 issue.
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