Scan 31
Musical Courier 1902-03-26: Vol 44 Iss 1148, 1902
26 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026. Printed page 32. See the scan on archive.org.
1very sonorous, but he sings well and with clear pronunciation of the text. The tenor Arangi in the part of Hanno was lively and full of good musical intentions, which were not all fulfilled, however. Far better than I had heard it before was the orchestra, which behaved admirably, although some parts of the score are anything but simple or easy.
3Wednesday night I witnessed a portion of a very good "Faust" performance at the Royal Opera House, not because I had a special longing for Gounod's too cloyingly sweet music but because I wanted to hear the young American soprano, Miss Farrar, who caused so much cable correspondence between Berlin and New York. I found everything verified that had been said in praise of the young lady herself. She sang her "King of Thule" with great tenderness of sentiment and expression, and warbled her jewel aria with the well-known clean, natural, inborn American coloratura cleverness. Besides these musical and vocal advantages Miss Farrar displays a perfectly charming, virginal and entirely prepossessing stage appearance. What wonder therefore that she has quickly won over her German audiences. But besides this she is also a great favorite and exceedingly popular with her colleagues of the Royal Opera House, and all the talk about intrigues of members of the personnel against the American artist, or non-confirmation of her contract on the part of the intendency, is bosh and nonsense!
5An important musical creation which up to last Friday night I knew only by reputation is Albert Becker's B flat minor Mass. The lately deceased former conductor of the Royal Cathedral Choir owed his distinguishing cognomen of der Messenbecker (by no means to be mistaken for Beckmesser) principally to this work, unquestionably his greatest, and which some of the Berlin critics place by the side of Brahms' German Requiem. I should not for myself like to place it upon such a high pedestal, but fully agree with my confrère of the Tageblatt, who says that it is one of the most important churchly works of the last three decades, and that in this respect it deserves to rank with the compositions of Kiel.
7In Protestant sacred music the work holds an exceptional position, in so far as the employment of the chorals is concerned, which, with special reference to the text, are given to the orchestra and the organ. Becker is the only one who so far has done this, just as he was the first among modern composers who has reintroduced common church hymns into his Mass. Not only in the matter of style, but also because of beauty of form and noble character, as well as vivacity of expression, is the B flat minor Mass a work of distinction. The invention is less original than poetic in sentiment, and the facture often furnishes big climaxes and effects by means of comparatively simple devices, although the orchestration as a whole is very brilliant, perhaps even a trifle too much so for a work of sacred denomination. The greatest beauties are contained in the first part, especially in the episodes which treat of the Incarnation of Christ.
9The performance on the part of the venerable Singakademie Chorus was on the whole a very worthy one, Prof. Georg Schumann having taken special care evidently of the difficult eight part choruses, which went with precision, clearness in technical execution and a certain amount of brilliancy and volume of tone, which were missing frequently in performances under his predecessor's baton. The Philharmonic Orchestra also did its share with credit, and only the solo quartet was not as good as might have been wished.
11"Beethoven and Carreño." How does that rhyme together? In fact it doesn't, and yet our handsome countrywoman gave a recital with a program of Beethoven sonatas at the Singakademie Saturday night, and a good sized Berlin audience applauded vigorously and judiciously. In former years, not so long ago either, the "Valkyrie" of the piano" was anything but a "classical" performer, but she is a woman not only of temperament but also of intelligence. This means that of course in the course of her intercourse with some of her four husbands, the penultimate—at least for the present—and musically most important one, Eugen d'Albert, has had some influence upon her which ripened and broadened her understanding of the master, of whose works he himself is one of the world's greatest interpreters.
13Hence this Beethoven program, which comprised the two E flat sonatas, from op. 27 and 31, of which the latter received a delightful reading; furthermore, the Waldstein Sonata, which was not so interestingly performed, but with great brilliancy in the virtuoso direction, and lastly the Appassionata, which was the most satisfactory reproduction of all, teeming as it did with redhot fiery feeling throughout, and with considerable dash and élan in the final presto.
15From here Madame Carreño will go to Italy, as she told me after the concert, and will begin her tournée there at Turin, where vermutlich di Turino she will meet with success.
17The program of the eighth concert of the Royal Orchestra at the Royal Opera House last night offered nothing new in its program of three numbers. The pièce de résistance, and also the best interpreted work of the evening, was Raff's "Leonore" Symphony, which Weingartner conducted with spirit and evidently con amore, albeit it belongs to the by him otherwise despised category of "the symphonies after Beethoven."
19Raff's two principal orchestral works, the "Forest" and the "Leonore" symphonies, seem to stand the test of time better than some of the musical creations of men with greater names, such as Mendelssohn and even Schumann.
21August Goellerich, the long haired Liszt biographer and musikdirector at Linz on the Danube, will shortly publish with Schuster & Loeffler here a biography of Bruckner.
23Court opera director and composer Gustav Mahler was married yesterday to Miss Alma Schindler, daughter of the well-known landscape painter by that name. As Mahler was born a Jew, but is baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, while the young lady belongs to the Lutheran creed, the marriage could not take place except under some technical difficulties. This seemed to interest Vienna society all the more, and the number of people that gathered in front of St. Charles Church was, despite the rain, a considerable one. They were, however, doomed to disappointment, for Mahler had fooled them, and the ceremony took place two hours before the advertised time.
25In a performance of Eugen d'Albert's "Cain" at Weimar last week, the bearer of the title role and cudgel, Mr. Gruner, smote his stage brother Abel (Herr Zeller) so heavily upon the head, by accident of course, that the latter was not able to walk from the stage without a cane,
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