Scan 23
Musical Courier 1897-05-12: Vol 34 Iss 897, 1897
78 lines. Read by computer on 24 September 2026. Printed page 24. See the scan on archive.org.
1Worcester Festival Choral Society on May 4, when the composer will conduct. Among the soloists engaged for the occasion is Miss Regina de Sales.
3Among the callers at this office, this week, have been Miss Nina Bertini Humphreys, Mr. Reginald Little and Mrs. M. Hallowell Campbell and Miss Campbell.
5CONCERTS.
7The second series of symphony concerts began on the 24th inst. with a program entirely devoted to Brahms, with the exception only of Schumann's overture to Genoveva, op. 81, and an orchestral arrangement of Beethoven's sonata in A flat, in memoriam of the recent death of the master. The performance at this moment of Brahms' works, in particular the grand symphony in D, tends to make us realize more than ever the loss of him to whose genius we owe such treasures.
9The symphony, full of life's warmest pulsations, contains all the manifold qualities of the master's writing, his spontaneity of exquisitely flowing melody and the gigantic power of structural form, without any of the complexities of style which sometimes make his composition difficult to understand at first hearing. It was magnificently played. The Tragic Overture and the Academic Festival Overture, op. 80, were also on the program. The themes of the latter are well-known German students' songs, worked out with wonderful dexterity into a brilliantly effective piece of music. The humor with which the Lederne Fuchs is chased through all the instruments of the orchestra must have raised a storm of delight when it was first heard in Germany.
11Mme. Blanche Marchesi sang four of his best known Lieder, and, for the first time, we did not altogether admire her conception. She was not in full command of her voice, owing to recent illness, and it would have been an improvement if she had transposed Dunkel wie Dunkel into a lower key, which would have been far more effective, in her case, for the Beethovenian climax at the end. Alto Liebe is a dreamy poem—Brahms followed the meaning of the words in his music—and there is no passion in the last two lines, "Ein alter Traum ersaf mich, und führt mich seine Bahn." Had she so understood it she would have read it to perfection, as she did Feldernsamkeit and Wiegenlied. Sandmännchen as an encore never fails to delight an audience. Mr. Wood's orchestra was superb, with the exception of the brass, the intonation of which was more than once strongly doubtful.
13The most interesting concert of the Crystal Palace series is always the extra one given for Mr. Mann's benefit; and this rule was in no way broken on Saturday. The vocalists of the occasion were Madame Albani and Mr. Andrew Black, while Miss Maud McCarthy played the Mendelssohn violin concerto. Madame Burmeister-Petersen gave a fine performance of Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia; and the program included, as its chief orchestral works, Brahms' Song of Destiny, Schumann's D minor Symphony, and the Leonora Overture No. 3.
15Mr. Grossmith held his audience in a continual spell of merriment during his humorous and musical recital on the 8th inst. in St. James Hall. How Beethoven took himself to write a sonata and the fantasia Setez les Perles, one must have heard to fully realize the amount of humor this extraordinary artist infuses into each of his themes. When the "porks" growl in the bass, and "the pearls," the bag for them, the string to fasten them in, the knot, &c. were musically represented, we had program music enough to convulse everyone with laughter. Another exquisitely clever bit of humorous music is the melody of Three Blind Mice, à la Mendelssohn, Mozart, Gounod and Chopin. First the mice are involved in a song without words; then they curl their tail at the end of a little Mozartian piece on the same theme; Gounod makes them slip into O that we two were Maying, and for Chopin they draggle again their tails in a little paraphrase in the minor—really pretty, characteristic, and most amusing. Finally, Mr. Grossmith wishes us to realize the contrast of the Three Blind Mice vulgarised on the barrel organ, which is, of course, equally comic. Space forbids the enumeration of all the other items. If Sir Henry Irving and Mr. Beerbohm Tree could have heard their own speeches from their clever imitator, they would agree to his proposition that next he would represent Hamlet, with which he closed the performance amid roars of laughter.
17THE BOHEMIANS.
19Our Manchester correspondent writes: "The production for the first time on any English stage, of Signor Puccini's new opera, The Bohemians, which seems destined, as indeed it richly deserves, to bring fame to its composer, took place here last Thursday night. It may be said at once that the first performance by the Carl Rosa Opera Company was a brilliant and unmistakable success, in spite of the lamentable indisposition of the tenor.
21The lovely quasi-timid phrase, 'half sly, half shy' with which Mimi reveals her name to Rudolf; her repetition in the dying scene of the words he had spoken to her at their first meeting—"How frozen are your fingers; let me warm them into life"—belong to the quiet order of beauty; but no less beautiful, though in another manner, is Musetta's song in slow waltz tempo, in which she gives some account of herself, or the passage in which she asserts to Marcel her right to do just what she pleases. But, indeed, the music throughout is charming; the various motives are thoroughly distinctive and characteristic of the personages and scenes they are intended to depict, and beautiful effects are obtained in almost every page with the slightest expenditure of means.
23The large audience on Thursday and again on Saturday were not slow to recognize these merits. At the first performance the whole of the last part of Act II., from Musetta's song, and at the second the duet between Rudolf and Marcel were re-demanded and encored. After every act the curtain was raised four or five times, and the composer received a most enthusiastic ovation. He was visibly pleased with the warmth of his reception, and he must have been more than satisfied with the manner in which his work had been produced. Principals, orchestra, chorus, had evidently their hearts in their work, and the result was one of the greatest successes ever achieved by a first performance, a result to which the excellent staging—the scene outside the Café Womas was a masterpiece of its kind—also contributed in no small degree.
25Of the play as a whole it may be said that "it strikes surely and skilfully a string which has vibrated at one time or other in the heart and brain of every man who possesses a brain and heart." The somewhat delicate subject has been treated for the most part with great discretion; but the episode of Benoit, the landlord, might be dispensed with. It is quite superfluous; it delays the meeting of Mimi and Rudolf, with which the real interest of the action commences; it leads to nothing, and it exhibits the four companions in a somewhat unpleasant light.
27F. V. ATWATER.
29New York College of Music Commencement.
31THE New York College of Music held its nineteenth annual commencement and concert on Saturday evening, May 8, in the college hall. The following was the program:
33Piano solo, Air de Ballet……………………………Chaminade
34Miss Gussie Zuckerman.
35Song, Tannhäuser, Dich theure Halle…………………Wagner
36Miss Lina Kohlbusch.
37Violin solo, concerto (andante)……………………..Mendelssohn
38Miss Josephine McKenzie.
39Piano solo, concerto A minor (third movement)………Schumann
40Miss Gertrude Rubin.
41(With accompaniment of a second piano.)
42Violin solo, concerto (second movement)…………….Rode
43Miss Tillie Stiller.
44Piano solo, concerto, F sharp (first movement)………Hiller
45Master Harry Graboff.
46(With accompaniment of a second piano.)
47Songs, opera Cinq Mars, Cantilena…………………..Gounod
48Miss Mamie Kenney.
49Piano solo, polonaise, A flat………………………..Chopin
50Miss Katharine Campbell.
51Address by the president, Mr. Everett P. Wheeler and presentation of medals and diplomas.
53The pupils' concerts given at the New York College of Music are always of a professional degree of excellence, but on Saturday night the program was of more than usual interest—not over long, varied and interpreted superlatively well. Each year Mr. Lambert brings forward some new pupils, whose musical finish and authority hardly permit their being named in the ranks of amateurs. This year Mr. Lambert has not disappointed us, and little Miss Gussie Zuckerman, who played the Chaminade Air de Ballet with extraordinary clarity and finish, and Miss Gertrude Rubin, who played the third movement of Schumann's A minor concerto with unusual breadth, were to us new evidences of the excellence of Mr. Lambert's tuition.
55The work of Miss Katharine Campbell and Master Harry Graboff is well-known to us. Little Master Graboff was easily the star of the occasion and astonished his hearers by his phenomenal brilliancy and power in the first movement of the Hiller F sharp concerto. This little boy has talent.
57Miss Campbell played the rather hackneyed Chopin A flat polonaise with a spirit and finish which are anything but hackneyed. Miss Josephine McKenzie and tiny Miss Tillie Stiller gave violin solos, and also astonished their hearers by their mastery of their instrument.
59Miss Lina Kohlbusch, sang the Dich theure Halle, with pure tone and breath. Miss Mamie Kenney was ill and her solo was replaced by a baritone solo, The Palms.
61The program was concluded by an address from Mr. Everett P. Wheeler and the distribution of medals.
63William R. Chapman's Busy Season.
65DURING the past season there have been few musicians as successfully active as William R. Chapman, the well-known conductor, teacher and composer. Mr. Chapman has just ended a season which has been phenomenally successful and unusually busy, and on May 8 left New York for Maine to prepare carefully there the choral work for the great Maine Festival to be held in October, and at which Mr. Chapman will conduct.
67On the eve of his departure for more hard work in Maine Mr. Chapman seemed so full of energy, so unwearyed in the cause of art, so thoroughly ready for new musical campaigns, that one marveled at the fact that since the 15th of last October this eminent choral leader has conducted 260 times (including rehearsals) and has traveled over 20,000 railroad miles. Not only this, but during this time Mr. Chapman has kept up his teaching in New York, has not neglected his composing, and has been three times to Maine, in which State he conducted in no less than twenty different cities. During the season Mr. Chapman has conducted with the Apollo Club of New York, the Rubinstein Club of New York, the Apollo Sixteen, the Rubinstein Club of Poughkeepsie, the Gounod Society of Hackensack, the Hudson Festival Chorus of Hudson, N. Y., the Catskill Choral Society, and the Trinity Choral Club of New Rochelle.
69In reviewing his season Mr. Chapman dwells with much pleasure and stress on his remarkable success in the fine work done with Mr. Seidl in the production of the Faust Symphony. However, Mr. Chapman alludes but casually and very modestly to recent successes and artistic work. He is full of keen expectancy and enthusiasm at the prospects of the Maine Festival, which it is safe to predict will be a red letter event in the musical history of this country. There are thirty-five prominent soloists engaged, headed by Madame Nordica—a really remarkable aggregation of well-known names and talent.
71The "dummy," or catalogue announcement, of the festival has just been published and is very artistic. It gives one a fair idea of the large aim and proportion of this festival.
73It is to active preparation for this great festival that Mr. Chapman will devote most of his time this summer. The indefatigable conductor purposes getting all the choruses in line before the hot weather, and intends giving twenty preliminary concerts before the end of June.
75On June 23 Mr. Chapman will return to New York to fulfill his engagement as conductor at the summer concerts to be given at the Larchmont Casino. Mr. Chapman has also been offered the conductorship at the Round Lake Festival, to be held during the latter part of August, but has been compelled to decline this offer on account of conflicting engagements in Newport and the preparations for the Maine Festival. It would seem nearly impossible with this list of achievements staring one in the face to believe that Mr. Chapman could find time for his teaching and composing. But he does find time, as a large class of earnest pupils and practical results in the lines of both teaching and composition prove. A charming little song of Mr. Chapman's, This Would I Do, is at present having a phenomenal sale, no other song by an American composer since the publication of Oh Promise Me having proved so popular.
77Mr. Chapman will return to his winter work after the Maine Festival, which takes place in October. We will be glad to welcome this earnest, magnetic musician again, and in the meantime we wish him the greatest artistic success he merits and satisfying results he always obtains in every line of his work.
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