Scan 8
Musical Courier 1902-04-09: Vol 44 Iss 1150, 1902
24 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 9. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE MUSICAL COURIER.
3VIENNA, MARCH 19, 1902.
5THE rehearsals for Rossini's "Stabat Mater" are already in full sway. According to Mascagni's wish, Concertmeister Rosé has declared himself willing to undertake the leadership of the violins. Mascagni will also direct this work in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, Bucharest and Jaffy, with the assistance of the Italian soloists who take part here also.
7Princess Pauline Mettnich-Sandor gave a brilliant musical soirée these days at which about 150 persons were present. The soirée, as all those given by this music loving princess, was very successful. Among the participating artists Madame Guthel-Schoder, the well-known opera singer, and Disraeli, concert singer, were distinguished by particularly hearty applause. Among those present were Erzherzog Ludwig Victor, Count Goluchowski, Prince and Princess Ilinsky, Baron Albert Rothschild and many other notabilities.
9In these days of overcrowding and exaggeration, where everything is "über," from "überretti" to "überclavier technique," it was really comforting to hear such dignified, artistic, sterling qualities as those which Raoul Pugno has at his disposal, and which he displayed in the Grieg Concerto at the foregoing Philharmonic concert. I fully agree with Max Kalbeck, the brilliant critic of the Tageblatt, who finds that the only redeeming number of this concert was Pugno's playing, and that the Philharmonic Orchestra is not holding itself up to the standard of excellence which it enjoyed under previous conductors, especially under Richter, in whose time it was classed as being one of the most superior orchestral bodies. Director Hellmesberger does not seem to have the energy with which to achieve the great unity, the ensemble which makes the vast number of instruments sound as one integral whole. Kalbeck wittily remarks: "The members of the Philharmonic boast of the fact that they could play their Bach and Beethoven in their sleep, but it is not at all necessary that they give us the proof by going to sleep in the concert." The solo instruments, too, are often wobbly, are not disposed these days, failing nearly always on the Sundays of the Philharmonic concerts. Very few novelties have been given this season, among them being the Sauer and Scharwenka piano concertos, which but served as excuse to see the composers at the piano. Musical novelties here in Vienna, anyway, are scarce and far between: the public like the time-worn customary repertory. Is it perhaps that the appreciation and classification of new compositions require a certain amount of extra brain work and more constant attention? Is it that they find the old friends more worthy than the new? I do not know.
11True it is, however, that among pianists the only one who introduced slightly unfamiliar compositions was Busoni, who gave us César Franck's "Choral Prelude and Fugue" Etudes by Alkan, and played us the rarely heard Rubinstein Variations; whereas Sauer and d'Albert found the piano literature so poor that they chose two numbers on their program identically. Rosenthal, after whose marvelous acrobatic technical feats we wonderingly thought to acknowledge that there could be nothing more complete where simple mechanism was concerned, finds his technical twin brother in Godowsky, who with his wonderful distortions of the Chopin Etudes, in which he veritably plays duets with himself, brings our astonishment to the highest point. All these technical difficulties are done with an equanimity and repose which trouble the simple minded hearer, and it is only in the midst of some gruesome labyrinth in which Godowsky has led our friend Chopin that an occasional cynical smile is seen to play around his lips. Godowsky was a pupil of Leschetizky, Saint-Saëns, and last, but not least, of Godowsky, and it is in this latter school that I think he made most progress.
13And yet after the surprise and astonishment have faded away, when our admiration for these omnipotent fingers has had time to cool down, what remains of the musical impressions which we carry away from the recitals of these modern virtuosi? Little or nothing compared to those retained from the sound of a vocal cantabile, the melody of a string quartet or the harmony of an orchestra; yet the pianist can give us a wealth of divers colors, and I am persuaded that in future years when the pupils turned out by all the conservatories will have flooded the musical world with technic this idol will no more receive such universal adoration, it will no more be the end, but become the means to the end. We will no more go to a piano recital to wonder at the machine-like precision and rapidity of a Godowsky or Rosenthal, but will hasten to him who charms both soul and body, a poet of the keyboard, a giant of harmonious sounds. Perhaps a beginning of this epoch was already announced by the slight audience at the first Godowsky recital, the still slighter one at the second. His playing at times lacks virility and color, not so that of Busoni, who gave three recitals here also and achieved a real triumph with his arrangements of the Bach organ preludes and fugues, given with a grandeur, force and intensity which made one forget the piano and imagine oneself listening to an organ, with the etudes of Chopin, which he played in entirety at his Chopin evening (though the idea of devoting a whole evening to Chopin alone is not an example I would recommend to pianists in general, as Chopin alone, in spite of his manifold beauties, becomes monotonous), and in the last recital by the Rubinstein Variations and Liszt selections, finishing as bis with Liszt's "Campanella," where his wonderful trill brought joy and dismay into all piano adepts' hearts.
15Another trill which we had occasion to admire was the one of Erika Wedekind, the famous German colorature singer, who, with Pugno and Thibaud, gave a "gala" concert, with orchestra, recently. She possesses a really wonderful suppleness of voice, her runs, arpeggios and tri's are bird-like, her method sure, and yet when in the Ambroise Thomas mad scene from "Hamlet" in the Ophelia aria she comes to the Swedish folksong, so sweet, so plaintive, and instead of phrasing it with tenderness and feeling passes over it with little or no emotion, when she abuses of certain effects and relies on them to cover her lack of real cantabile, then I cease to be an admirer of Miss Wedekind's. Thibaud, with the soft, luscious tones of his violin, sang himself into the heart of his audience with the well-known Mendelssohn Concerto, that war horse of the violinistic tribe, and as encore gave a Bach number for violin alone. This young man really charms the ear by the sweet caressing tones which he draws from his instrument, and his gaining reputation and quantity of engagements point to him as an artistic star on the horizon of the fiddle's future. After voice and violin one would expect that the piano, the king of misused instruments, would drop gently into the background, and the public spoiled by the cantilene of a human voice and that of a Thibaud would remain cold in spite of the alertness of most "clavier virtuosi." This was, however, not the case; it was the piano in fact that celebrated the triumph of the evening, and Pugno, whose greatest difficulty seemed that of transporting his many kilos from the artist's room to the middle of the stage, where he had to bow his thanks, profusely played the Fourth Saint-Saëns' Concerto, not only with that velvety touch which makes us forget that the piano is an instrument of percussion and to which we are accustomed from this artist, but also a greater nobility of line, more grandeur and more development than I have heard in his previous interpretations. Just returned from Hungary, the land of the cymbalum and gypsy bands, he played a Brahms Hungarian Rhapsody (A bis) with all the swing and deviltry of the Magyars, and made one think that it was not good fat old father Pugno but some wild Hungarian spirit at the piano.
17The next evening Ysaye, for the first time in thirteen years, played to the Viennese public, "dropped his visiting card here," as he himself expressed it, and by his wonderful interpretation of the Bach E minor Concerto, the Beethoven, and as a and b the Rimsky-Korsakoff Fantasia and Saint-Saëns' Valse Caprice, arranged by himself, achieved indescribable success.
19An interesting concert was the one given by Frau Julie Mancio, the wife of the great Italian singer, who was teacher here at the Conservatoire, and whose name is famous at both the English and German courts. Frau Mancio, following in the method of her famous husband, is a well-known teacher here, and by her style in singing old Italian songs, which showed both school and taste, the expression and meaning which she gave to the tones of her dark, rich mezzo voice in the songs of Brahms, Schumann, Liszt and Wagner, and the verve and chic in the modern numbers which closed the program, showed that Frau Mancio was a pleasant exception to those of the vocal pedagogues, who know all about singing, but had never been able to do it themselves. Madame Mancio has sung extensively in Germany and the Northern countries, and intends to make a tournee in England during the spring season.
21Easter is almost upon us and brings with it the usual amount of sacred music, chief among which we may mention Massenet's "Marie Magdalen," which he will conduct himself, as also the 125th representation of his opera "Manon" at the Opéra. The last Philharmonic concert of the season took place last Sunday, with the assistance of Frau Soldat-Roeger, who played the Beethoven Concerto. She pleased through a sure and reposeful mastery of the technical difficulties, through simple and unaffected manner, through that which we call style. Frau Soldat-Roeger has earned much praise through her interpretation of the Beethoven Concerto on the Continent. Here in Vienna, where she played it for the first time, her triumph was a complete one. The preceding numbers were Gluck's Overture to "Iphigénie en Aulis," with Wagner's poetic close, and Bruckner's E major Symphony.
23Little Miecio Horszowski, the eight year old pupil of Professor Leschetizky, gave his concert the other evening, it having had to be postponed from February to this month on account of the illness of the little artist. Not yet able to reach the pedals little Miecio climbs to his perch at the
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.