Scan 4
Musical Courier 1902-03-26: Vol 44 Iss 1148, 1902
38 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1HOTEL CECIL, LONDON, March 8, 1902.
3HAVING succeeded in engaging a really good quartet for last Saturday's Popular Concert, the authorities were evidently so well pleased with themselves that they celebrated the occasion by giving a concert which was too long by quite three-quarters of an hour. When will concert givers realize that there is hardly a mistake so great as providing programs of undue length? If the program is of the conventional type, merely an array of old friends, the audience has the remedy in its own hands and can leave the hall when the concert is half over, and leave the last few performers to waste their sweetness on a desert air. But if, as was the case on Saturday, the last half of the program is the most interesting, there is nothing for it but to take a surfeit of music with what grace one may, and to hope that one's musical digestion will stand the strain. The last number was that rara avis of the Popular Concerts, a new piano quartet. It was the work of F. d'Erlanger, a composer who has a remarkable gift for attractive melody, but lacks the power to develop his material well. Had he used about half the material which he actually introduced, and worked it out properly, the quartet would have been much more interesting. As it is, it is diffuse and rather rambling and a little compression would do it no harm. The Scherzo, in which the composer was obliged to confine his muse within smaller limits, is by far the most successful movement of the four, and betrays a very delicate and piquant fancy.
5The string quartet had on this occasion the advantage of being led by Tivadar Nachez, a very excellent violinist who has an uncommonly good idea of quartet leading. In addition to this he is a splendid soloist, with a fine technic and great artistic gifts. As his solo he chose Bach's beautiful Sonata in E minor, and he played it brilliantly. M. Nachez is quite one of the best violinists resident in London, and it is to be hoped that he will appear more regularly at the Popular Concerts. The program on Saturday included a second novelty in the shape of a song cycle called "Cameos," by Mme. Liza Lehmann, an indefatigable writer of this class of music. Her cycles, of which she produces, as a rule, one a year, have certainly a fleeting popularity, but they are not likely to stand the test of time. Joseph O'Mara, who sang it, found the nervous strain too much for him, and was unable to sing "Dalla sua Pene" in the second part of the program, which was unfortunate, for Mr. O'Mara is a good singer, and if one of his contributions had to be omitted, we would have preferred that it should be "Cameos."
7C. Hayden-Coffin gave a concert at Steinway Hall on Monday afternoon.
9In the evening the Hans Wersely String Quartet gave a concert at Bechstein Hall. The program was peculiarly familiar, even for a chamber concert, and if Mr. Wersely and his friends hope for success they must really supply us with something rather more novel. Mendelssohn's Quartet in E flat major, that by Schubert in D minor and Dvorák's in F are, of course, works of the first rank, but they are all very familiar and they are constantly played in London every year, and by much better quartets than that of Mr. Wersely. Only a few weeks ago the Bohemians gave as fine a performance of the Schubert Quartet as one could wish to hear, and the Wersely performance compared with that much as lager beer compares with champagne. It was flat and colorless, and the tone was only too often simply excruciating. The latter fault seems to have been due for the most part merely to carelessness, for in the slow movement the tone was good enough. It was in the Scherzo and Finale that it became so scratchy and unpleasant to the ear.
11The Herbert Sharpe Trio, which gave the second of three recitals at Steinway Hall on Wednesday evening, displayed much more enterprise. Two of the works, Beethoven's Trio in E flat and Dvorák's in G minor, were, of course, familiar, but the third was completely new. It was written by Frank Bridge, a student of the Royal College of Music. Like many college pupils, a great deal of his work at present is pure, unadulterated Brahms, but he might well choose a worse model, and since he has evidently got something of his own to say it is quite probable that he will develop an individual style. His trio is a thoughtful, clever work, with an amount of feeling and romance that one does not always expect from a young composer. Here and there it needs compression, as in the first movement and in the Andante. The Scherzo and the Finale are both admirably written, the former being particularly charming.
13Enterprise, too, was shown by Miss Rosa Leo in the program which she set before her audience at the Bechstein Hall on the same evening. Her voice displayed traces of a cold, but she nevertheless got through the very trying ordeal of singing eleven songs and nine duets uncommonly well. No fewer than five of the songs and seven of the duets were quite new, and Miss Leo is to be congratulated upon making so striking a departure from the beaten track. Some of the songs were particularly charming, as, for example, Arthur Hervey's "For Aye" and Théodore Lack's "Parle-moi," while Florian Pascal's duets, in which she was joined by Miss Beatrice Spencer, proved to be light and pleasing, though not strikingly original. Miss Leo is a thorough artist, and she sang everything that she undertook admirably. She also had the assistance of Dr. Theo. Liehammer, one of the most polished and refined of singers, who was at his best in Weber's charming song, "Ich sale ein Röselein."
15Sauer is not paying a long visit to London this season, and both his concerts took place during this week, the first being on Monday evening and the second on Wednesday afternoon, at Queen's Hall. His programs were both of a somewhat conventional order, the second particularly so. The first was saved by the inclusion of Mozart's beautiful Sonata in A, a sonata which is too much neglected nowadays. Sauer, of course, excels in delicacy and neatness and from this point of view alone nothing would have been more admirable than his performance of the sonata. He was particularly happy in the Finale, a movement which is often played in far too violent a style and which loses thereby a great deal of its beauty. Sauer treated it with remarkable delicacy, and his reading is certainly preferable. Brahms' Variations and Fugue on a theme by Händel he hardly played so well, but his performance of Schumann's Fantasia in C was particularly intellectual and interesting. At both his concerts his Chopin groups were rather hackneyed, and though he played them beautifully he might well have chosen something less frequently played. The whole of his second program, indeed, was arranged on a very familiar plan. The Bach Fugue, the Beethoven Sonata and the Liszt Transcription were all there; except, indeed, for Schumann's Toccata, op. 7, he played nothing that is not included in one program or another most weeks of the concert season. He was at his best in the Beethoven Sonata in E major, op. 109. His reading of it was broad, clear and thoughtful. It had more romance than one would, perhaps, have expected of him, but there was never a vestige of sentimentality, while for sheer virtuosity it could not have been surpassed. Sauer, however, occasionally makes the fault of mistaking mere loudness for power.
17On Wednesday afternoon, too, a ballad concert took place at Queen's Hall, and the Mles. Douste and M. E. Garceau gave the first of a series of small operatic performances in the small Albert Hall Theatre. More later.
19On Thursday evening J. Campbell McInnes, a baritone, and C. A. Lidgcy, a composer, gave a recital at Bechstein Hall, while in the afternoon Steinway Hall was the scene of a musical and dramatic entertainment given by Misses Ada and Jessie McLeod and George Smith Wright.
21The authorities who govern the affairs of the Royal Choral Society have, apparently, at last risen to a sense of their responsibilities. Hitherto they have been content to give us one eternal round of "Messiahs," "Redemptions" and "St. Pauls," as if they were the only good choral works in existence. On Thursday night, however, they made up their program of Mendelssohn's "Walpurgisnacht" and Dvorák's "Spectre's Bride." When the latter work was last given in London it is difficult to say, certainly not for many years. Yet is Dvorák's finest choral work, and might well be allowed to have a place in the annual scheme of the Choral Society, for a time at any rate. The performance, with Madame Sobrino and William Green as the lovers, and Daniel Price as the narrator, was as good as could be.
23PARIS, MARCH 8, 1902.
25THE revival of "l'Africaine" at the Opéra was characterized by all the gorgeous scenic display and lack of good singing that are usual at l'Académie Nationale de Musique. The production was retarded by the illness of Mr. Affre, the tenor, to whom was assigned the role of Vasco. Was it not von Bülow who characterized an opera tenor as "not a man, but a disease"? The singer who replaced Affre was a young tenor, who, I believe, has not yet appeared on the stage, Dubois, whom I heard at the Conservatoire last July. He gained the first prize for opera. He has a really beautiful tenor voice, and if he plays his cards well can make a career for himself. His voice is remarkably brilliant and particularly suited for heroic roles, such as Vasco di Gama. The soprano, for whom it is said Meyerbeer waited as long for his ideal as Wagner for his Brünnhilde, was represented by Mme. Jane Marcy.
27The original "creatrice" of this difficult role made her first appearance in Paris at the open air concert called the Ambassadeurs. She was then known as Mlle. Saxe, which name she afterward Italianized into Sasse; and of her appearance at the Café des Ambassadeurs she says: "My hearing by the director was sufficiently favorable to be engaged there at the stipend of 450 francs per month ($90). This sum, though small, was more than I could have earned in Brussels, where a similar engagement was offered me; but by accepting it I became a Parisian artist on the road to fame." The Café des Ambassadeurs now presents a very cheap and vulgar performance to its frequenters. Mlle. Sasse then sung the "Drinking Song" from "Galatea," the Mad Scene from "Lucia," airs from "Le Caid," "Concert à la Tour," "Serment," "La fille du Regiment," &c. After this the future Selika of the Opéra in Paris was engaged at another variety theatre, Le Géant, at a salary of 600 francs a month—an instance of what ability and perseverance will do. After having made serious studies for a lyric career, Mlle. Sasse made a début at the Paris Opéra in the role of Alice in "Robert le Diable."
29She is also memorable for having sung the first soprano in "Tannhäuser" on its production here in 1861.
31The present representative of Selika is Mlle. Jane Marcy, a Belgian subject, who gained the first prize for singing at Brussels and made her first appearance at La Monnaie in the role she is now singing at the Paris Opéra.
33Noté, the Nelusko of the cast, is a capable artist, but not likely to efface recollections of Faure in the part. Program for the week: Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, "l'Africaine"; Friday, "Faust."
35"Le Roi d'Ys," which, on its first production at the Opéra Comique, so pleased the public that it kept its place on the bills of that theatre for 150 performances, was renewed last week. The principal tenor part was then sung by the famous Talazac, the two principal female roles being given to Mmes. Blanche Deschamps and Simonnet. This work should be given at the Opéra, its breadth and tragic character requiring a larger frame than the Opéra Comique can give. Delna, gifted as she is with a superb organ, has never learned how to make the most of it. When one hears the first note that she emits bending over the body of Eurydice in the "Orphée," of Gluck, the first idea is, what a beautiful instrument; the second is, how badly it is used. Léon Beyle, the tenor, is an excellent type of the light tenor of opéra comique, but lacks the force necessary for parts such as Mylio. The orchestra and chorus were really good. Luigini conducted.
37Program for the week: Monday, "Carmen"; Tuesday,
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