Scan 4
Musical Courier 1903-02-25: Vol 46 Iss 1196, 1903
34 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1THE MUSICAL COURIER.
3Berlin
5GERMAN HEADQUARTERS OF THE MUSICAL COURIER,
6HAUPTSTRASSE, 20A, BERLIN, W.,
7January 31, 1903.
9U
11NQUESTIONABLY the most peculiar pianist among the musicians and the most militant musician among all pianists is Ferruccio Busoni. He long ago showed this spirit of antagonism against all that is conventional to such an extent that by one of the most prominent of Berlin's music critics he was dubbed "unmusical." He keeps up his way of being "contrarious" this season, and has actually created something like antagonism on the part of the usually very fairminded brethren of the critical quill. They resented his two concerts with novelties of the sort that would make your hair stand on end. They did not take into consideration the fact that Busoni was fighting for his own convictions (foolish and "unmusical" as they may have been) and that Busoni was putting up his good, cold, hard earned cash for these concerts. He had originally announced three, but the receipts were so small in comparison with the expenses that two of these entertainments (?) swamped Busoni's budget.
13Now Ferruccio is out with the program—on green paper, extra size and in varied colored print—for three piano recitals, the first one of which took place at Beethoven Hall. These programs are something peculiar in themselves, which you will understand if I tell you that on the third one figures in two parts the entire opus of Liszt, which the composer designates as "Douze Grandes Etudes d'exécution transcendante," and sandwiched in between the two sections of six studies each, stand Schubert's four Impromptus, op. 90.
15On the program for tonight there are no less than three fugues by various composers, which is a rather peculiar arrangement. The number which will undoubtedly be antagonized by the critics, and justly so, is the opening one, consisting of Busoni's piano transcriptions of four of the posthumous choral preludes by Brahms. This is a double offense, the first against the spirit and character of the chorale, which is decidedly not music intended for the piano, and the second against the musical mènè of Brahms, who fitly enough wrote his choral preludes for organ. Had he intended them for piano he could and would have written them for that instrument without Busoni's kind assistance. That the latter pounced upon the choral preludes as good prey for piano transcription is a matter of bad taste, especially as monetary considerations more than anything else led Busoni to perpetrate these transcriptions. The sum offered by the publisher was a comparatively large one.
17The program for the first recital, however, contained some even more "aggressive" numbers.
19For instance, he goes one step further still when he gives to the world a new piano version of the Bach Chromatic Fantasia, written by Bach for the piano. I looked at this new edition in print, for it is published. It contains a long explanation in which Busoni takes exception to the chromatic fugue as belonging to this fantasia. He considers it inferior to the latter, and says that the fugue actually spoils the fantasia. What arrant nonsense, for this fugue is surely one of the grandest of all of Bach's fugues for the piano! Busoni makes comment upon his many changes in the fantasia, trying to justify his arrogant proceeding. The text runs all through the music, as the changes occur every few bars. The fugue he then adds in the printed copy without changing a single note, and, of course, also without a word of comment. He also left it out upon his program and performed the fantasia at his recital without the fugue. Well, it is useless to argue a matter of taste, but to rearrange a Bach composition for piano I call arrogant, for Bach knew how to write for that instrument as well as the greatest of modern piano composers, Busoni included. The fourth of the Bach arrangements, however, is an exceedingly effective and excusable one. It is a piano transcription of the Bach "Chaconne" for violin. Raff has made an orchestral arrangement of this noble work, the grandest one ever written for the fiddle. Brahms has set it for the left hand, but not in the sense of an arrangement for concert use, rather as a piano study. Busoni, however, wanted to win over this violin piece as a valuable addition to the piano literature, and thus bring it nearer to the knowledge of the general public. For this reason, and because the transcription is an extraordinary specimen of musicianship, Busoni should be forgiven. As a performer for the piano Busoni excels in works of two extremes, Bach and Liszt. The former's works he interprets more with his musical intelligence than with musical feeling, of which he has only a modicum. But with all due respect for this intelligence, Busoni's playing lacks the plasticity of Godowsky's fingerwork and he spoils the clearness of his reproductions by an overdose of the loud pedal.
21Liszt's compositions he performs most brilliantly as long as they are mere virtuoso pieces. He gave last Friday night the six pieces, "Années de Pèlerinage." Of these the well known "Au bord d'une source" was deprived of all charm by being taken at an allegro tempo.
23For Busoni's Beethoven playing I have never had a particular fancy. His reading of the "Pathetic" sonata was ludicrous, and although he was much better in the op. 110 A flat Sonata, he drew out the tempo of the fugue to such slowness that one lost all sense of rhythm. The badly pedaled fugue was a mass of unrecognizable piano noises.
25The Meiningen Court Orchestra gave their last concerts here under favorable auspices, the audiences being as large as they were enthusiastic. The Berlin public evidently is in favor of a conductor who performs music for its own sake, and not merely in order to show off his own personality. It also appreciates the programs gotten up with the same purpose, and if the playing of the band was not always the acme of polished refinement, there was about it a vigor, a freshness and a rhythmic precision which appeals to a multitude of people. All this we may possibly have heard for the last time, as General Musikdirektor Fritz Steinbach will exchange his Meiningen position for a more lucrative and important one as conductor of the Cologne Guerzenich concerts, and director of the Royal Conservatory of that city. Whether Wilhelm Berger, Steinbach's successor at Meiningen, will take the renowned orchestra traveling is a question that has not yet been decided.
27At the Saturday night concert at the Singakademie, the third of Bach's "Brandenburg" concertos, the one in G major for three violins, three violas, three 'celli and double bass showed the brilliancy and "Schneidigkeit" of the string material, and in three movements from the Tenth Serenade in B flat, by Mozart, for two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns, four horns, two bassoons and contra bassoon, the wind instruments had their inning. These works are treasures from Germany's orchestral literature which one does not too frequently get a chance to enjoy. In Brahms' "St. Anthony" variations, the entr'acte and ballet music from Schubert's "Rosamunde," and in Wagner's "Meistersinger" Vorspiel the whole Meiningen Orchestra shone to greatest advantage. The novelty of the evening, a symphony by Paul Juon, had its first and, on the whole, rather ragged and slovenly production at this concert. Juon seems to be inclined to walk in the paths of classicity rather than ultra modernity. He is a direct follower of Brahms, and this is probably also the reason why his symphony was taken up by Steinbach and the Meiningen Orchestra, for they hold a sort of mortgage on Brahms. Juon, who was born at Moscow in 1872, combines in himself German and Russian educational influences. He was a pupil of the Moscow Conservatory, and studied composition there with Arensky and Tanejeff. After he graduated in 1894 he came to Berlin, where he continued his theoretical studies at the Royal High School for Music. He became a pupil of the late Bargiel, and in 1896 won the Mendelssohn stipend for composers. He did so again in 1897, and since then has devoted his time to teaching and composition. This symphony in A major is his first, and shows a strong blending of Brahms and Tchaikowsky, the latter more especially in the imitation of certain orchestral peculiarities and effects, such as for instance the sweeping scale passages of the strings, reminiscent of the glorious march movement from Tchaikowsky's "Final" Symphony. On the whole, however, the Russian influence is not as marked as that of Brahms. The composer, in his endeavor to be Brahmsian, constructed a first movement, which in somewhat doubtful Italian he calls "In modo di Passacaglia," simply because Brahms chose that form for the final movement of his E minor Symphony. He, however, avoided calling attention to that designation in spite of his masterly handling of the form, while Juon's movement shows little technical proficiency in treatment. His long, spun out main theme is also not well adapted for the purpose. It is made up of little pieces of thematic material, strung together artificially, and hence lacking in continuity. These patches, tacked together with some difficulty, are used afterward piecemeal not only for the purposes of the said "Passacaglia," but also to do service as main material for the other movements of the symphony, of which the D minor Scherzo is the best. The Andantino, with its Italian opera section, is the weakest movement. Altogether the symphony did not seem deserving of the importance it was given in the way of performance upon such a program and by such a conductor and orchestra. Nor was the demonstrative enthusiasm of the audience quite justified. Hochschule students were greatly in evidence.
29Professor Nikisch's program for the seventh Philharmonic subscription concert contained no absolute novelty. Goldmark's "Sakuntala" overture and Richard Strauss' clever orchestra rondo, "Till Eulenspiegel," were performed in the brilliant virtuoso style for which our Philharmonic Orchestra has become famous under Nikisch's rousing conductorship. Very careful in the working out of dynamic shadings was the reading of Schumann's best symphony, in C major. The soloist of the occasion was Miss Erika Wedekind, the prima donna of the Dresden Court Opera House. Either I am in bad luck or this young woman is a considerably overrated singer, for every time I have had a chance to hear her she was not in the best of voice and her intonation was not flawless. This was also the case last Monday night. The slightly tedious and superannuated aria from Handel's "L'Allegro" she sang in perfunctory style. In the middle register the voice, however, had considerable charm of timbre. Miss Wedekind did a graceful thing also when she brought forward with her every time she was recalled Bernhard Davidson, the first flutist of the Philharmonic Orchestra, who had seconded her with the utmost precision of ensemble and good amalgamation of tone production. In Mozart's concert aria, "Mia speranza adorata," however, Miss Wedekind fell woefully short of the mark. She has no correct idea of the style of delivery of Mozart's music; she sang flat in more than half a dozen places, and she did not reach either the two high E flats nor the single high F which Mozart demands in this aria. Why attempt to sing this aria if one cannot command the required altitude of voice? The dear public, however, did not seem to notice these shortcomings (when do they ever do so?), but applauded most lustily and enthusiastically.
31At the next concert Ysaye will perform the Bach E major and the Saint-Saëns B minor violin concertos and the orchestral selections will consist of Brahms' F major Symphony and Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll."
33The Marteau Quartet performed a string quartet by W. Pahule, the viola player of the Geneva Quartet. It sounded as though it had been leisurely composed by a musical idler, who just wrote for the love of it, whenever he happened to feel like doing so. Still more is this the case with the string quartet, op. 5, in the somewhat unusual key of D flat by Henry Marteau himself, which was performed here last week at the second soirée. Marteau chanced to hit upon a melodious theme, jogged it down and then quite leisurely and con amore began to work a string quartet of three movements out of it. Its principal advantages are that each of the four instruments is given about an equal chance, that great euphoniousness prevails
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