Scan 13
Musical Courier 1898-01-05: Vol 36 Iss 931, 1898
52 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 14. See the scan on archive.org.
1lig has conducted at Covent Garden, London, where he gave Wagner opera according to Bayreuth models.
3Arthur Nikisch has definitely closed with the Leipsic Gewandhaus administration for life. He signed last week a contract which not only guarantees him a very high remuneration, but which also assures a life pension of a considerable amount to his widow and children in case of his demise or incapacitation through sickness or old age.
5This takes Mr. Nikisch out of all plans and considerations in conductor questions that may and probably will soon arise not only here in Berlin, but also elsewhere.
7Paderewski will be the soloist at the Leipsic Gewandhaus concert of February 3, 1898. He will probably play the Chopin F minor concerto and a number of unaccompanied soli. My ticket for the concert in question is already ordered.
9At the Philharmonic concert last Monday night I saw and spoke with Otto Goldschmidt, the former impresario, private secretary and accompanist of Sarasate. He is the husband of Mme. Bertha Marx, the excellent pianist, and they are at present living in Berlin, where Madame Goldschmidt-Marx is deeply mourning the loss of her oldest son, a very talented young man, who a few months ago met death through a bicycle accident. Herr Goldschmidt told me that his wife's health is seriously affected through grief.
11Sarasate is at present making a very successful tournée through Germany and Switzerland in conjunction with the Cologne pianist and musical litterateur, Dr. Otto Neitzel. In the beginning of the coming year Sarasate will fulfil some remunerative engagements in Russia.
13A telegram from Cologne informs me that Kapellmeister Otto Lohse's three-act comic opera, "The Prince Against His Wish," will be first of all brought out at the Rhenish capital, where Director Hofmann intends to produce the novelty in January next.
15To-day, on Weber's birthday anniversary, the Berlin Royal Opera will give Weber's "Freischütz" for the six hundredth time. This performance of the most popular of all German operas before "Lohengrin" will be a specially prepared, festive and commemorative one.
17Prof. Heinrich Ehrlich, the veteran pianist, pedagogue and former music critic, has handed into the Royal Academy of Arts a scientific treatise on the subject of "The Ornamentation in Johann Sebastian Bach's Piano Music." The report about this treatise which the musical senate of the Royal Academy sent to Minister von Bosse is worded as follows: "The work in its general dissertations must be designated as a highly meritorious one. For the first time it is here proven in extended and convincing manner that the later prescriptions of Philipp Emanuel Bach and of Türck cannot retroactively be applied to the ornamentation of Johann Sebastian Bach."
19I met Bernard Stavenhagen the other evening at a concert here and he confirmed the reports that he had tendered his resignation as court conductor at Weimar and that it had been accepted. He and his wife will remain in their present position until the end of this season, after which they will be open to another engagement.
21Prof. Joseph Joachim was decorated by Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria with the Maximilian order for Art and Science.
23A little late in 1897 the statistical year book of the royal theatres of Berlin, Hanover, Cassel and Wiesbaden for 1896 is just now made public through Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn in Berlin. Interesting to our readers is principally the activity of the royal opera, which in 1896 gave performances on 342 days, part of which, during the summer months, were held at Kroll's. The greatest number of individual performances was scored by Goldmark's new opera, "The Cricket on the Hearth," which was given thirty-four times. Humperdinck's "Hänsel and Gretel" follows, with twenty-seven performances; then comes "Lohengrin," with twenty-four, "Cavalleria," with twenty; "Tannhäuser," with eighteen performances. Wagner was altogether represented with nine works, which took up eighty-four evenings, viz.: one-fourth of the whole year's performances. To Mozart belonged twenty-five evenings; Beethoven, with his sole opera, "Fidelio," figures ten times on the house bill; Weber had fifteen hearings; Meyerbeer was given on twenty evenings, and Gluck once. Graeb's ballet, "Phantasien im Bremer Rathskeller," was given no less than forty-seven times. These, I repeat, are the statistics for 1896. Those of 1897 will show considerable difference in the number of performances of several composers' operas, but Wagner will more than hold his own.
25At the concert of Miss Natalie Janotha, on last Saturday night, a fugue for piano, by Chopin, figured on the program. Regarding this hitherto unknown and unpublished work, Miss Janotha caused in the preliminary puffs for her concert the announcement of the fact that she is the owner of the precious manuscript, and that this fugue, "the only one which Chopin ever composed," was played for the first time in public at this concert.
27The concert programs which are sent to the press in advance contained the following remark anent this composition: "Fuge (manuscript bearbeitet von Janotha)," which means that the fugue has been worked over, rearranged or transcribed or something or other, by the concert giver. The program handed out to the public on the evening of the concert no longer contained the above remark, but in its stead the words: "Fuge (manuscript) Erscheint nächstens im Druck," which means will appear in print shortly. There is something peculiar about this, and I begin to suspect that this unpublished fugue of Chopin's is as much of an apogryph as was the Saint-Saëns piano sonata dedicated to Victor Benham.
29Frau Herzog, of the Royal Opera, after her recent successes in the Mozart cycle, has now started for Moscow, where she is to be the soloist at one of the Philharmonic concerts.
31It is asserted by a London paper that Emperor William has expressed a wish that the Marquis of Lorne's opera "Diarmid" be given at the Berlin Royal Opera House, and, as His Majesty's wish is akin to a command, we shall probably hear the work which is presently being given in London, in Berlin in the near future.
33In the meanwhile, the forces of the Royal Opera are now busy studying Bungert's "Odysseus," which is to be the first novelty to be brought out in 1898.
35Leonard Emil Bach's opera, "The Lady of Longford," the libretto of which is said to have been written by the late Sir Augustus Harris, and which was first given at the London Covent Garden Theatre in July, 1894, with Edward de Reszke, Alvarez and Eames in the cast, has just been produced for the first time in German at the Stadttheater of Breslau. It was tastefully put on by Director Loewe, and met with considerable success, as the telegrams in the Berlin papers state this morning. The principals in the cast were the ladies Borchers and Gardini, and Herr Franz Schwarz. The composer had come on from London to superintend the final rehearsals, and he was called before the curtain a good many times.
37The great operatic ensemble built up by Pollini is rapidly falling to pieces now, for there is at present writing no definite successor of the dead impresario in view. Bit-tong, the stage manager, and Pollini's right hand man, has refused to accept the directorship under the conditions which the administrators have imposed. He declares himself unable to hold the artists together any longer, and some of them have already accepted other engagements to take effect at the close of the present theatrical season. Conductor Gille's services have been secured by the Berlin Royal Opera and by the same institute the basso Wittekopf has been engaged. The tenor Birrenkoven found a new engagement at the Vienna Court Opera. Miss von Artner, the soprano, has closed for one year with Damrosch, and will be heard in United States next season; after which she is to enter the personnel of the Dresden Court Opera. Frau Schumann-Heink, the now famous contralto, will also make a tournée through the United States in 1898-99, but has accepted no further engagement after this one as yet. Kapellmeister Krzyzanowski and his wife, Ida Doxtat, were reported as having been secured by the Weimar Opera House, but they deny this rumor.
39The Wagner family left Rome last week and returned to Bayreuth via Florence and Munich. Siegfried Wagner has finished the orchestration of the second act of his comic opera, which he hopes to have ready for first performance at Munich in 1898. A newly published musical paper of Berlin asserts that Cosima Wagner is tired of the Bayreuth singing school and intends giving it up altogether, and that Kniese is looking for another job. It remains to be seen how much truth there is in this rumor. O. F.
41BERLIN MUSIC NOTES.
43Wilhelm Kurz, from Prague, made a very favorable impression at his first piano recital in Saal Bechstein. Extreme neatness of finger technic, clear, musical phrasing and entire lack of the superficial pomp and circumstance that usually mar younger artists' performances are the welcome virtues on which Mr. Kurz might base his claim to recognition. In the Wagner-Liszt "Isolde's Liebestod" the Bohemian pianist was not at his best. He seems possessed of sentiment rather than passion, and in consequence Chopin's G major nocturne, op. 37, No. 2, fared better at his hands than Wagner's transcendent erotic paean. A very interesting and seemingly not difficult etude called "Am Seegestade," by Smetana, and a collection of charming, piquant tit-bits, labeled "Carnaval Mignon" (op. 48), by Eduard Schütt, afforded effective contrast to such weightier works as Paganini-Brahms' variations, op. 35 (Book 2), Bach's Chromatic Fantasie and Fugue and Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody.
45On December 27 Emile Sauret will introduce Aldo Antonietti, one of his most talented pupils, to the Berlin public in the Singakademie. Sauret will lead the orchestra.
47Hermann Gura has been engaged for the opera at Schwerin in place of Carl Mayer, resigned.
49At his second recital in Saal Bechstein, Edouard Risler repeated his success with public and critics. There is no doubt that in Risler we have to deal with an artist who cannot be measured by common standards. Though his interpretation of Beethoven's and Chopin's most familiar works is at variance with all tradition, and with the conception of all other eminent contemporary pianists, one dare not take Risler to task, for his playing convinces and has not offended even the most conservative Beethoven authorities.
51The Parisian pianist draws the most representative musical audiences Berlin can produce, and it is a note-
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