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Musical Courier 1901-11-27: Vol 43 Iss 1131, 1901
28 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 10. See the scan on archive.org.
1BOSTON, November 24, 1901.
3MRS. FANNIE BLOOMFIELD-ZEISLER and Josef Slivinski gave piano recitals here last week, and Miss Pauline Woltmann, a mezzo soprano, gave a concert—all in Chickering Hall.
5Miss Woltmann's concert was on the 20th, and she sang ten songs in German, two in Italian and five in English. Her voice is rich, warm, eminently agreeable, and in seven songs by Brahms she showed genuine emotion. Her voice and other musical gifts warrant the attention paid here to her recital, although it must be confessed that she did not always have control of her breath; and therefore there was occasionally unsatisfactory handling of the phrase, as well as undue accentuation of unimportant notes, and a falling below the true pitch.
7Mrs. Bloomfield-Zeisler gave her recitals on the 20th and the 23d. I heard only the first, and as the program was the same as that of her first in New York, reviewed last week in THE MUSICAL COURIER, I shall not reprint it. Her playing was admirable, most admirable. The Sonata by Beethoven—op. 111—had been studied with infinite pains, no detail, however, seemingly insignificant had been neglected; yet spontaneity and breadth and the grand style distinguished the performance. Her reading of Chopin was neither sickly nor mannered; it was neither feminine nor, what is worse, mannish; and it was brilliant without hard polish. Only the familiar nocturne (op. 27, No. 2) disappointed me, for it seemed to creak in movement, as though there were overweight. The performance of the strictly bravura pieces was electrifying. No doubt Mrs. Bloomfield-Zeisler has pleasant associations with Vienna, but I beseech her that when she next plays here she will forswear the company of the vapid and salon Schütt. His pieces are not worthy of her unusual abilities.
9One of the most marked features of her performance was the individuality in treatment, and also in the means of expressing her conception. There is an originality that exerts itself in discovering things in a familiar piece—as in bringing out strongly a contrapuntal figure so that it lords it over the chief theme, as in reversing the long accepted proportion of things. This species of originality is born either of perverted taste or an insane longing after the applause of the unthinking, who always welcome something new, and shout in sweaty joy: "Did you hear that? I never knew the piece before. He's a true genius." I do not refer to such outrages on art. The individuality of Mrs. Bloomfield-Zeisler is not to be confounded with such originality; it is compounded of authority, which is not vixenish, of a feminine delicacy which is free from the sentiments of Laura Matilda, and of something that is subtly felt, and is irresistible, something exotic, something intoxicating, maddening. There was a time when this pianist tried by undue strength to convince the audience that after all she was not a woman. She delighted in what Christopher Marlowe called "great and thunderous speech." It is not a compliment to say that a woman plays like a man, and the sight of a woman playing as though she had been training for violent deeds is not a pleasant one. Mrs. Bloomfield-Zeisler has all the necessary strength; she uses it more discreetly; and she also uses her intellectual faculties with surer results. She is by herself, nor would it be easy or profitable to compare her with others.
11Mr. Slivinski gave recitals on November 19 and on November 21. At the first he played Beethoven's Sonata, op. 53, Mozart's Rondo in A minor, Schumann's Papillons and pieces by Chopin and Liszt and Schubert-Liszt. At the second he played Schumann's Fantaisie, op. 17; Tchaikowsky's Sonata, op. 37; Chopin's Sonata, op. 58, and pieces by Chopin, Schubert, Rubinstein, Schubert-Liszt, Liszt.
13These were formidable programs—too formidable—and the programs of Mrs. Bloomfield-Zeisler were too long. Mr. Slivinski plays exceedingly well; his interpretation of Chopin is particularly delightful; he is entitled to respect and admiration—but is it wise to play the sonata by Tchaikowsky immediately after the fantaisie of Schumann—and then bring on a sonata by Chopin?
15Some applaud the practice of playing the heavy things in a lump at the beginning, then bringing in the sentimental numbers and then closing with a grand exhibition of fireworks and the apotheosis of the pianist, who is surrounded by maidens, young and old, kneeling at his inspired feet hot from manipulation of the pedals.
17If I were the Tsar of Boston I should issue as my imperial will a proclamation that no pianist should play a sonata in public under penalty of enforced attendance at the Lowell lectures and residence in Roxbury; that no recital—actual performance, encores, apotheosis and all—should last over seventy minutes; that death should be the penalty for even putting Liszt's arrangement of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," &c., on the program.
19A pianist—these remarks are of general application—is none the greater because he has incredible staying power; because he can outlast his audience. If he cannot show his abilities during the first hour he is not likely to thrill or move during the second.
21And what a delight it would be to find a pianist dismissing an audience with gentle, beautiful, contemplative music and not turning the piano into a volcano in full operation during a thunder storm, a preparation for the din of the street with electric cars and roar of traffic. The finale must always be an arrangement in which the original tune is strappadoed and tortured till it shrieks and its face is no longer to be recognized.
23The recitals of visiting pianists and singers have thus far been poorly attended. The visitors have deserved a better fate. They were known, they have been applauded. Did they come too early in the season? Were the prices of admission too high? It is an interesting problem, which managers would like to have solved. The seats for the Symphony concerts this year were by no means cheap and it is easy for the subscribers to argue that they will hear the chief pianists and singers at these concerts. Then there are subscribers to the Handel and Haydn, the Cecilia, the Apollo, the Kneisel Quartet. To these subscribers the prices asked for recitals are like the grasshopper in Ecclesiastes. Bostonians are not spendthrifts.
25The Kneisel Quartet gave its second concert November 18, when the program was of a far more interesting nature than that of the first. The selections were Grieg's Quartet (three movements); Vincent d'Indy's Piano Quartet, op. 7; Haydn's Quartet in D major, op. 64, No. 5. The Quartet by D'Indy was first played here by Messrs. Lachauine (piano), Ysaye, Marteau, Gérardy. It was one of the early works of the ultra fastidious Frenchman, for it was first played in 1878, the year of his orchestral legend, "Forêt Enchantée," the year he left Colonne's Orchestra, where he had served as chorus master and drummer. He had then written his "Piccolomini" and "Antony and Cleopatra" overtures and a symphony in three movements. And he had journeyed to see at Tutzing one Johannes Brahms, who received him sourly.
27There is an austerity in the music of D'Indy that is not merely the austerity sometimes found in the works of his master, Franck. Franck was intensely religious; D'Indy is intensely, fastidiously intellectual. He was brought up by his grandmother, who herself loved music; his father played the violin for an amusement—oh, ghastly thought!—his uncle was a wealthy amateur who had studied seriously and written chamber music, and opera comique, dramatic scenes, songs, &c., so Vincent was turned naturally toward music. But his individuality was not shaped by home influences. He fell under the spell of Berlioz, Wagner, Bach, Brahms, César Franck. He went as a pilgrim to Munich and Bayreuth to hear the music dramas of Wagner. He himself was by instinct what the French call a progressionist. At the same time, working hard and in most practical ways, at Paris, he longed for the mountains and plains, the harvest fields and the pines and beeches of Ardèche, where his family was originally at home. "It is only here that one feels in full repose and at the true spring of all art," he wrote from Vernoux. And what did he read? At first Poe, Hoffmann, Uhland; then he adored Dante, then Goethe, Schiller, Molière, Shakespeare, and later Flaubert, especially the Flaubert of "La Tentation de Saint-Antoine" and Tolstoi. He worships the Assyrian art, the paintings by the primitive Germans and Flemings, Holbein and Rembrandt. He is chiefly fascinated by the art of races that long ago became as though
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