Scan 5
Musical Courier 1897-01-13: Vol 34 Iss 880, 1897
76 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 6. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1or dreadful the monster may be represented in pasteboard. A singing dragon is a nonsensical idea. Moedlinger yawned out his Lass mich schlafen! with realistic effect, but otherwise the vocal utterances of Fafner could not be understood. Frau Herzog, with her pure high soprano voice, warbled out the forest bird's word-clad chirpings in delightful style. Frau Heink again entranced our ears with her noble, sonorous contralto. Schelpner was very dramatic as Alberich, especially in the meeting with his brother Mime, and Frau Gulbranson was far superior in this music drama than she had been in Die Walküre, although she as well as Grünning did not last vocally to the end of the most exacting and tremendous love duet of the finale.
3The public was enthusiastic beyond bounds, having applauded itself tired and shouted itself hoarse, though without avail as far as a raise of the curtain or an appearance of the artists before the curtain was concerned.
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7I need but say little more regarding the performance of Die Götterdämmerung. It deserved praise throughout, despite the fact that it was not quite up to the height of the Siegfried reproduction. The orchestra in these two last music dramas was superb, barring the mishaps of the horn in the repeated Siegfried horn calls. But for this the conductor cannot justly be held responsible, and Weingartner richly deserved the distinction which the Emperor bestowed upon him by calling him up into the royal box after the first act of Die Götterdämmerung and handing to him in person the order of the Red Eagle. The same honor was conferred also upon Court Conductor Dr. Muck on the occasion of a concert held at the imperial castle on the night between the Siegfried and the Götterdämmerung performances. Thus it would appear as if His Majesty, who, as I informed you last week, also decorated Heinrich Gruenfeld with the order of the Red Eagle, was very partial to musicians just now.
9I did not like Grünning quite as well as the older Siegfried, as he had appeared to me as Siegfried the Youth. Still, his last hunting story telling scene, especially the returning recollection of Brünnhilde, was very well sung and acted, and reconciled me to the comparative tameness of his leave taking from his first wife and his listlessness in the interview with the Rhinemaidens. Frau Gulbranson had saved herself for the grand immolation scene of the finale, and she succeeded in getting very near to her intended altitude; but she did not quite reach it. She fell just short of true grandeur, and I have yet to see the ideal Brünnhilde—the ideal of Richard Wagner. Of the home personnel in the cast—Frankel as Gunther, Moedlinger as Hagen, Miss Hiedler as Gutrune and Frau Goetz as Waltrante—I have spoken in former budgets, and I can therefore pass them over with the remark that they were well within the cadre of what may be termed a "model" performance, and that Frau Goetz deserves a special word of praise for the artistic delivery of her difficult scene with Brünnhilde.
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13So much for the artistic success of the performances. The financial one was equally great, if not greater. Not a seat was to be had for all of the productions with the exception of Rheingold, and this despite the fact that prices were raised far above the usual schedule. Still they did not quite reach the Bayreuth standard of $3, or 20 marks, for any and every seat in the house. Here it was from 24 marks down to 2 marks (50 cents) for different seats, according to location. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that most artists sing for very little at Bayreuth, while they demand good sums for their appearance "as guests" in so important an opera house as the Berlin Royal Opera. Six of these guests were engaged for these model performances and the opera house had to be closed on two days for rehearsals two days previous to the cycle, the management thus losing the receipts for these two nights. Thus I don't think the prices of admission were extravagant.
15That the public did not think so is evinced in the fact that the house was absolutely sold out, and that so great was the demand for seats that the intendency deemed itself encouraged to give this week a repetition of the Nibelungen-ring cycle with the same cast, but at considerably lower prices, to accommodate those Wagner and music lovers whose purses are not quite long enough to pay 18 marks for a seat in the first rows of the parquet. This week they can have this same seat for 10 marks (nearly $2.50), which surely is below the New York standard.
17No more attentive listener or more regular attendant was there among all the audience than His Majesty the Emperor. He appeared in his box with the Empress with military punctuality at the very minute set for the opening of each performance and remained in his seat to the final fall of the curtain. Also did he listen with rapt attention, and not once during the whole four long evenings did he take his eyes from the stage. The public evidently did not exist for him and he followed the performances with the closest and most fixed attention. I had a chance to watch him very carefully, as during two of the performances, Siegfried and Die Götterdämmerung, I occupied a seat in the proscenium boxes just opposite the royal box. After each of the four works the Emperor expressed to Count Hochberg his great satisfaction, and begged him to convey his august thanks to each and all of the artists concerned in the cast.
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21The three of the seven evenings of the week which were not occupied with the Nibelungenring cycle I filled out with attendance at concerts, and thus I heard on Tuesday night of last week the third subscription concert of the Bohemian String Quartet in Bechstein Hall. The program offered Schubert's lovely A minor quartet and Beethoven's grand E flat string quartet, op. 127, both of which works were performed in the admirable style which I have so frequently described.
23Between these string quartets was placed the novelty of the evening, a violin sonata in B minor, by Oscar Nedbal, the viola player of the Bohemians. It is quite noteworthy that both the second violinist, Mr. Suk, and the violist of this organization are not only performers, but also composers worthy of note. This sonata has very little of the conventional about it, although the former is the classic one. Still the invention, though quite original, is not always beautiful or important. The principal theme of the slow movement, for instance, is not a natural, but a very forced melody; but the final allegro is fresh and pleasing. The sonata was played with a great deal of musical insight and excellent ensemble by Carl Hoffmann, the leader of the Bohemians, and Prof. J. Jiránek, of Prague, both of whom were loudly applauded by a numerous audience and the composer enjoyed a special call to the platform.
25You will hear the Bohemian Quartet in the near future, and I hope that these four artists will meet with as much success in the United States as they did here, and they deserve it.
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29On the same evening a local vocal ladies' solo quartet gave a concert in the Singakademie, which I could not attend. I noticed, however, on the program an a capella quartet entitled Das Veilchen (The Violet), composed by Frank Damrosch and dedicated (as I am told) to these four Berlin ladies. I did not know before that Frank had followed his brother Walter and had gone among the American composers.
31***
33Otto Hegner made his reappearance in public after an absence from the concert platform of four or five years in the Singakademie on Saturday night. The long interval the young man had filled out with study under both Carreño and Eugen d'Albert, especially with the latter. The result, let me hasten to say, proved a very satisfactory one and bears out my prediction, made in New York half a dozen years ago, that the handsome boy Otto Hegner, whom you all heard and admired, would turn out the greater pianist, and Josef Hofmann the greater musician of the two prodigies, who at the time divided public favor in the United States.
35***
37When I heard Hegner, at the Braunschweig meeting of the Tonkünstler, play in private d'Albert's F sharp minor sonata in the presence of the composer, who was his teacher, I was surprised at the progress he had made. Now this surprise has ripened into something very much akin to admiration. He played the Beethoven E flat concerto with a great deal of virility, big tone and touch, and lots of temperament. Perhaps there was a bit too much of the latter quality, or it was not sufficiently controlled to please the classicists among the critics. But I can assure you it pleased me, and I am of opinion that just this greatest of Beethoven's compositions for the piano can stand a good dose more of musical temperament than of the so-called artistic repose. I had enough of that in the Sophie Menter interpretation.
39Under d'Albert's direction of the Philharmonic Orchestra in the accompaniment to his second concerto, Otto Hegner then gave a truly rousing reading of that beautiful and interesting work. Not even d'Albert himself, or Teresa Carreño, played this concerto as tellingly and with such absolutely flawless technic as did young Hegner, who will surely soon be counted among the first of the coming pianists. He captivated his hearers with the beautiful singing tone in the slow movement, which he displayed upon a superb Steinway grand, with the brilliancy with which he played the electrifying little scherzo episode and the tremendous power with which he built up the climax in the finale. Both artists, Hegner as the pianist and d'Albert as the composer and conductor, were called out more than a half a dozen times at the close of the concerto.
41Liszt's Don Juan fantasia closed the program, but I hate this rape upon the genius of Mozart so intensely that I could not bring myself to listen to Hegner's performance of this virtuoso piece.
43***
45The last event of this interesting and eventful musical week was last night's fifth Philharmonic concert under Nikisch's direction. My complaints about the length of the programs have not availed me any so far, for this concert beat the record of duration. It lasted just three hours and a quarter. Nevertheless the program consisted of only two works, the Byron-Schumann Manfred Overture and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. If it is, as it seems to be, de rigueur that we must hear the latter work at least twice each season, I wish that it would be placed on a program the first part of which does not quite consume two hours. After two hours of Manfred it is physically well-nigh impossible, at least for an attentive listener, such as I flatter myself to be, to devote all his energy of hearing for still another hour and a quarter upon the reproduction of so serious a work as the Ninth Symphony. Nor do I believe that the general audience is equal to the demands in receptiveness, or the orchestra in vigor and spirit to do itself and the work full justice. Thus it seemed to me last night that in the opening allegro the maestoso, spirit demanded by the composer was absent even in the conductor. The second and third movements, however, were superbly performed, more especially the scherzo. The last movement, which was never one of my favorites, though it sounds like heresy to admit such a fact, was finely given as far as the choral episodes are concerned. These had been carefully drilled into his Philharmonic chorus by Sigfried Ochs, and Nikisch therefore found little else to do but to conduct. The difficult and unsingable solo quartet, however, I have rarely heard given worse than on this occasion. Mrs. Gmür-Harloff's soprano is too thin for the part and the large hall; Mrs. Luise Geller has a voice, but she does not know how to sing; Dierich, the tenor with the lachrymose larynx, as dreadful, and Rudolf von Wilde seemed out of sorts as well as out of voice. Nevertheless, the very large audience seemed satisfied and even much pleased, for they applauded most vociferously and had Nikisch out upon the platform half a dozen times.
47As regards the performance of Schumann's Manfred, I have nothing but praise for all concerned, most of all for Nikisch, whose musical and refined conception shone to greatest advantage in this gloomy but exceedingly fanciful work.
49As in last year's performance, Dr. Ludwig Wüllner declaimed the Manfred text. About this artist I said in a recent issue of THE MUSICAL COURIER:
51As regards Wüllner's singing, it cannot any longer be classed among the purely cantatorial efforts. The highly talented son of Professor Wüllner, of Cologne, is a great actor, speaker and only incidentally also a singer. His greatest drawback for the latter qualification is that he has very little voice. His delivery, therefore, is more of a combination of strongly accented, very characteristic and dramatic recitation of the text, musically pronounced, joined to great facial expression, than an actual singing. These qualities he seems to have fostered more and more in the last year or so, and hence, while his delivery of songs is clever, interesting and some-
53William LAVIN,
54TENOR,
55In America Season '96-97
56SOLE MANAGEMENT:
57H. M. Hirschberg's
58Musical Bureau,
5936 West 15th St., New York.
61MME. D'ARONA,
62PRIMA DONNA.
63Voices developed from foundation to stage.
64Analytical and synthetic special courses (with diploma) for teachers and professionals.
65Grand Opera in German, Italian, French and English. Oratorio, Concert, Church. Etc.
66124 East 44th Street,
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69Alberto JONÁS,
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