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Musical Courier 1898-10-17: Vol 37 Iss 971, 1898
35 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1Berlin Branch Budget
3BERLIN OFFICE THE MUSICAL COURIER.
4BERLIN, October 1, 1898.
6IT was only a couple of days before the opening of the legitimate concert season that I sat with a few friends in a café and played a solid little game of skat. True to the never betraying principle of "no luck in love," I won the princely sum of 4 marks, German money, viz., nearly $1 of American money. Being thus on velvet I need not plish to confess that I spent this money in buying a ticket for the Wintergarten. This resort is the Koster & Bial's of Berlin, a better class of variety show, or as they call it in German, a Tingel-Tangel.
8Generally speaking I have no particular predilection for such places, and even in New York, where through the never failing courtesy of the late Allbert Bial I was the envied possessor of a passe-partout for Koster & Bial's, I did not attend the Twenty-third street show more than twice or three times in my life. The first time I went (it was about the time of Wilhelmj's appearance there) it was in company of a pianist, a friend of mine, who is now a benedict and father of several boys. While August was playing the "Preisleid" from "The Meistersinger," my friend, the pianist, was deeply interested in a pretty young lady who sat with a gentleman at an opposite table. After a while her escort, having paid the waiter, absented himself for a few minutes, and this interval the pianist, who had succeeded in making a decided impression, used to make his escape in the company of the fickle young woman. Just then her former friend re-entered the hall, and taking in the situation at a glance he rushed after the eloping pair. I could not withstand the curiosity of seeing how the matter would turn out and followed in leisurely fashion. Reaching Twenty-third street I was convulsed with laughter when I saw the bereft widower or bridegroom, or whatever he was, jumping into a heap of garbage at the Northwest corner of the street, where now the entrance to the Sixth avenue elevated railroad staircase is situated. By the time the hapless fellow had picked himself up again the cab containing the pianist and the girl, for whom he (not the pianist) had bought the sandwiches and the beer, was lustily driving off in the direction of Fourteenth street and the once famous, now long forgotten, Hotel Liszt, next door to Steinway Hall.
10Not quite as inconsequential was the affair which happened a few years later, when I went to Koster & Bial's the second time. The program was nearing its close when I reached the hall, and I had just saluted a friend who seemed a bit uneasy at seeing me at this place, when Mlle. (?) Vanoni took her position upon the platform for her final song. My friend (this time it was a violinist, a very good one and a very handsome fellow) seemed like one in a trance. As concertmaster of the orchestra in a downtown New York theatre he had heard and seen Vanoni and—had fallen in love with her. It cannot truthfully be asserted that his love was not requited, and hence the curly-headed and languid-eyed concertmaster sat with eyes burning with yearning, feverishly awaiting the end. When the sweet voiced Vanoni had finished and had been encored no less than three times, together with the throng of habitués the concertmaster left the hall. But he made his way to the Twenty-fourth street exit of the building, from which the artists and members of the orchestra are wont to emerge. To my shame I must confess that I went with discretion to the other corner of the south side of Twenty-fourth street and secretly watched the proceedings. It was not long before my curiosity was to be gratified by the sight of the concertmaster, who had enfolded the prima donna into his loose and wide winter havelock and quickly lifted her into a carriage which stood waiting for the happy couple. But someone else had been waiting there, too, and to my great dismay, at the very moment the carriage was about to start for home, the husband jumped into the vehicle from the other side of the street, and knocking out the concertmaster in one round he threw the limp musician out upon the pavement, where he found himself minus his eyeglasses and the best part of his front teeth. I rushed to his rescue when it was too late (that is mo tly always my fate), but I was in time to give the poor fellow some consolation in the shape of good advice by recommending him to another one of my friends, Joe Lowenberg, one of the best dentists and at the same time an excellent amateur fiddler. The concertmaster now wears a set of false teeth, but as he was since happily married to one of his many sweethearts the defect has done him no incalculable harm.
12I was rummaging over these "Episodes From the Life of an Artist," which Berlioz has immortalized in a symphony, from which I hummed to myself the idée fixe, when I reached the Wintergarten. What had drawn me thither? Certainly not my love for adventures of the above described sort, nor yet, as I said before, my predilection for the Tingel-Tangel. No, it was a desire to see and hear, above all to see, one of my oldest and longest cherished infatuations. Yes, I confess it, I was smitten once with the fairest of women, with Lillian Russell, who on the evening in question was saying good-bye to Berlin and the Wintergarten. Long before our ever loving RACONTEUR began to sing Lillian's praises in his own inimitable style, long even before Teddy Solomon had taken away the fair Lillian from her first husband, and of course many, many years before she succumbed to the wiles of the now divorce-seeking Perugini, I had fallen in love with the face, figure, hair, voice, and the "toot" ensemble of the beautiful charmer, and with memories of the charms of her whom I had not seen for many long years floating in my mind, I sat watching for her appearance upon the platform of the Wintergarten.
14Oh, that I had never won those 4 marks, and in consequence had been spared so very disappointing a Wiedersehen!
16Of course I know, and you don't need to tell me, that I have grown neither younger nor handsomer myself, and that I need not look therefore to an improvement in the looks of others. You will also not spare me the bitter remark that I have gained in girth and amplitude of anatomy myself. But then it's one thing being stout yourself and seeing another one, whom you know as a fairy, look like a beer barrel. The very fact that I am a fat degenerate makes me lean all the less toward fatty degeneration in others.
18And then that voice! Holy Moses, you prophet to whom my ancestors used to look for advice in the desert, will you tell me what has become of Lillian Russell's beautiful voice? It now sounds like a worn out, threadbare, unkalsomined and unvarnished prompter's stage whisper, which you sometimes hear before the voice of the real singer or actor makes its appearance. It is a voice without an echo, like Peter Schlemihl was without a shadow. Her efforts, for Lillian Russell's singing is nothing short of an effort, fell flat upon the large audience, which, immediately afterward, just as if to accentuate the fiasco of the fair American, went wild over the singing of Miss Ada Colley, a young lady with an exceptionally high soprano voice, reaching easily up to F and F sharp in altissimo. I don't think her voice has ever been much educated, but she sings naturally like a bird, clean like a whistle, and she charms her listeners. Marcella Sembrich sat in one of the boxes and she applauded most heartily and generously her newly famed rival, who, as I was told to-day, is soon to make the experiment of jumping from the variety upon the operatic stage. Whether this experiment will prove a lasting success, or whether even the voice of Miss Colley will prove a lasting one, I am inclined to doubt, simply because Miss Colley has not learned how to use her organ properly, nor has she had, as I have reason to believe, a musical education that would fit her for an operatic career. Be that as it may, Miss Colley was all the rage at the Wintergarten, while Lillian Russell made a fiasco—a real, genuine and an undeniable fiasco. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
20The honor of having inaugurated the Berlin concert season of 1898-9 must be accorded to an American, or rather several Americans, as the concert given by Martinus van Gelder, of Philadelphia, partook a bit of the character of a family affair.
22There was not so much honor gained with it otherwise, however, as neither the public nor yet the press were unreasonably enthusiastic over the offerings of Mr. and Mrs. van Gelder, who gave the first concert of the season at Bechstein Hall on last Wednesday night. It even seemed to me that my Berlin brethren of the critical quill were, perhaps, a trifle too severe with regard to Martinus van Gelder's talent, or, as they say, lack of talent, as a composer. I found in his festival sonata, op. 31, in C major, for piano and violin, quite some freshness and spirit of invention, especially in the first movement, and some of his songs, while they are not exactly melodious in invention or grateful for the singer, are at least suggestive and "stimmungsvoll." I enjoyed, for instance, the mood picture of Bis in die tiefe Nacht, the accompaniment of which is built upon a pedal point on E flat, and the Spanish Serenade (words by Longfellow) seemed to me quite clever and characteristic. Some of the Berlin critics, however, deny to Van Gelder all originality of thought and treatment. I do not, as you see, quite agree with them, and yet I am bound to say that Mr. van Gelder overrates his talent and his abilities, for, nothing daunted by his ill success, he told me that he would return next year and would yet convince the critics of the fact that he is a great composer. He will have to bring along something more important than he did this time before he will be able to succeed in his purpose. He cannot fill in either contents or through development of his themes the big form of the sonata and his part writing is of a rather primitive character. The above mentioned sonata and also the trio in D minor, op. 38, show this conclusively.
24Of the songs I spoke before and of the piano pieces I would fain not speak at all, for they were the weakest things on the program. A "dedication" to Professor Barth, playing with some of the notes contained in his name, begins promisingly enough with a nicely harmonized theme in E minor, but soon peters out into nothing. A little fugato in G minor sounds like conservatory study. Mazurka (Little Fairy) in E flat is trivial and light in the extreme, and the prelude and the fugue in E flat minor for two pianos, yclept "dramatic," and dedicated to Alexandre Guimant, the great French organist, is hardly of sufficient musical importance to merit its title and the distinguished dedicatee.
26They were not particularly well or interestingly performed by Mrs. Rosa van Gelder, whose piano playing is not of the kind that calls for special comment. In the sonata she performed the piano part so loudly and obtrusively that her husband, who has a nice and naturally pleasing, though not a very big tone, was forced to force his tone and it thus became at moments quite scratchy. A very pleasant exception must be made in the case of an episode in harmonics which occurs in the F major slow movement of the sonata, and which I consider the best idea Mr. van Gelder presented to his Berlin audience.
28The best artist on the program, by all odds, was the concert giver's sister, Miss Marie van Gelder, a mezzo-soprano of considerable range and good quality. The lady was evidently suffering from a momentary indisposition, but her excellent method (acquired from that wonderful voice trainer Mme. Anna Lankow, of New York) helped her to overcome this trouble, and she sang musically as well as clearly and with a good deal of feeling and temperament.
30Royal Chamber Musician Luedemann performed the 'cello part in the trio.
32Director Max Hofpauer, of the Theater des Westens, is fulfilling his promises and sticking to his program with praiseworthy precision and laudable energy.
34On last Thursday night, within a fortnight of the opening performance of Berlin's new second opera undertaking, he brought out the second novelty, a one-act opera entitled, "The Blacksmiths' Strike," by Max Joseph Beer, a Viennese composer. The work has been given before at several provincial German opera houses, notably Cologne and Mayence, where it is reported to have met with considerable success. The latter cannot be denied as having been achieved also at Berlin, and yet it was not an undisputed or absolutely justifiable one. There are in this opera too many styles and two many weaknesses to make it one preferred by the musicians, and yet it contains elements of great dramatic verve and forcefulness which are not to be ascribed entirely to the strong episodes contained in the book. The greatest fault of Beer's music, however, is that it contains close to moments of real creative inspiration some such great commonplace and musical trivialities that a listener of taste and musical culture becomes nauseated thereby. Thus the gallery was quickly whistling along the chorus in praise of labor, which, in Liedertafel fashion, is sung several times upon the stage and behind the scenes. The "tune" is so banal as to be unbearable, and yet the composer evidently was immoderately in love with it. Not all of his ideas are of his invention and he cribs from Wagner as well as from Masscagni with liberal nonchalance. To give you an idea of
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