Books › Musical Courier 1911-03-22: Vol 62 Iss 12, 1911 › scan 18
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Musical Courier 1911-03-22: Vol 62 Iss 12, 1911
70 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026. Printed page 19. See the scan on archive.org.
1KATHLEEN PARLOW'S AMERICAN TRIUMPHS.
3Kathleen Parlow, the young Canadian violinist, is now a world celebrity. Her European successes have been duplicated in America. She has played since December 1, 1910, to this date, in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn and the principal cities of Canada, and she has emerged from the ordeal without incurring a single word of adverse criticism. The gifts of this young girl are extraordinary. All the musical directors under whom she has played declare that she has "everything" that combines to make a violinist great. In her performances Miss Parlow has not been judged as a woman, but as an artist. After hearing her marvelous performances of the Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Wieniawski, Bruch and Tchaikowsky concertos, the men in the profession have declared that she is to-day one of the phenomena of the musical world.
5The following press notices refer to Miss Parlow's two concerts with the New York Symphony Orchestra, in Carnegie Hall on March 11, and in the New Theater on March 12:
7It was announced on the program that Miss Parlow would play an adagio and allegro from Glazounow's violin concerto in A minor. This number, Mr. Damrosch announced, had been found yesterday by Miss Parlow and himself as not fitting well into the program's scheme, and so they had decided to go over into Germany for a concerto. There they had selected Mendelssohn's. In her performance of this work Miss Parlow added no small part to the afternoon's entertainment. Her playing was full of rich and lyric beauty united to an opulent brilliancy, and she at once won completely for herself the evident admiration of her many listeners. Further on the program were the "Pizzicati" from Tchaikowsky's fourth symphony and his overture of "1812," also between these numbers a polonaise by Wieniawski for violin.—New York Sun, March 12, 1911.
9The program of the fifth Young People's Symphony concert, under Walter Damrosch, at Carnegie Hall, illustrated Slavic composers. Kathleen Parlow, the soloist, announced to play the Tchaikowsky concerto, was billed for the movements of that in A minor by Glazounow. This, as announced by Mr. Damrosch in his usual happy explanatory remarks and comment, was afterward thought too difficult and recondite for the audience, so the program made an excursion to Germany and the Mendelssohn concerto was the one Miss Parlow finally offered.
11This, together with the Wieniawski polonaise, she played with all the artistic feeling and sentiment and the admirable technical fluency and breadth and mellow richness of tone which have characterized her previous work.—New York World, March 12, 1911.
13Kathleen Parlow, solo violinist of the afternoon, was to have played two movements from Glazounow's concerto, but Walter Damrosch, the conductor, announced that in its place she would play two movements from the Mendelssohn concerto. This she did. The whole performance went well, and the youthful part of the audience applauded a great deal.
15Mr. Damrosch elucidated some of the compositions, played their main themes on a piano and explained certain orchestral instruments that played important parts in the music. Miss Parlow played with beauty of tone and much temperamental freedom and made herself a great favorite with the audience.—New York Herald, March 12, 1911.
17The other numbers of the program were the Brahms violin concerto and the same master's symphony in D major. The solo performer was that interesting young Canadian, Kathleen Parlow. It was perhaps too much to expect that this inexperienced player should sound all the depths of this concerto, yet her interpretation published so large a measure of the beauty and the emotion of the work that it might perhaps be regarded as a cause for astonishment.
19Miss Parlow has the requisite means for setting forth her conceptions. Her tone yesterday had great beauty. It was pure, mellow and penetrating. Her intonation was always accurate. Her fingers seem to leap almost instinctively to the positions along the fingerboard, and no matter how intricate the passage every note is in tune. Added to these traits of her playing is a bowing filled with vitality. It is a delight to listen to her performances, even when they offer no more than the manifestations of an extraordinary gift for the instrument; but there was that in her reading of the Brahms concerto which rose to loftier heights.—New York Sun, March 13, 1911.
21Kathleen Parlow played the Brahms concerto for the first time here, and only those who have listened to her when she has performed other works can have the correct estimate of the beauty of her tone and her dazzling technic. She gave abundant evidence of the latter in the interpolated cadenza, and of the former in her playing of the adagio movement.—New York Times, March 13, 1911.
23Miss Parlow played the Brahms concerto—than which there are others more genial and grateful—with a spirit and enthusiasm, a rhythmic force and wealth of tone, a technical sureness and fluency and an artistic intelligence and authority which deserved all the applause with which she was received. A little uncertainty of intonation at the opening of the first movement may be pardoned because of its infrequency with this gifted artist, whose playing is always a pleasure alike to the musically learned and unlearned. The virtuosity of the first cadenza, so brilliant and yet so facile, I thought particularly admirable.—New York World, March 13, 1911.
25Kathleen Parlow was the soloist at the concert of the Symphony Society, under the direction of Walter Damrosch, in the New Theater yesterday afternoon.
27The young Canadian violinist has not appeared to better advantage this season. She played the Brahms concerto with a beauty of tone and phrasing of which any veteran of the bow might be proud. The poetic passages of the famous composition were notably well done and in the Auer cadenza, which she uses, she held the interest not only of the audience, but of the orchestra. The musicians joined in the applause that brought the young artist half a dozen times back to the stage.—New York Herald, March 13, 1911.
29The climax of the afternoon's delights, however, was reached in Miss Parlow's performance of the violin concerto by Brahms—a fine achievement from every point of view. It was a peculiar pleasure to make the acquaintance of this sterling young artist early in the season, and appreciation of her talent has grown larger and warmer with her every appearance since.—New York Tribune, March 13, 1911.
31Playing twice in two days, Kathleen Parlow still winds about her tuneful fingers the New York audiences that are all the more delighted when she doesn't play novelties that she had intended to, but just lets the fiddle "sing the old songs." First Glazounow was found heavy for a Saturday "Young People's" diet, and the simple beauty of Mendelssohn's violin concerto was welcomed instead at Carnegie Hall. Then a Goldmark piece didn't appear at the New Theater Sunday matinee, and the Brahms concerto, with all its beauty of a more remote and lofty sort, made the heaviest demand yet put on the Canadian girl.
33Miss Parlow proved her artistic stature among the great and not the little fiddlers. She has found poetry in northern lands.—New York Evening Sun, March 13, 1911.
35Kathleen Parlow, the gifted girl who has been the one new instrumentalist in the blue ribbon class to come here this year, had the chance to play two of the three great modern concertos for violin in two days, Saturday and yesterday—Mendelssohn's at the Symphony Concert for Young People in Carnegie Hall, Saturday afternoon, and Brahms' with the Symphony Society at the New Theater yesterday afternoon. Curiously enough she was to have played Glazounow's on the former occasion and Goldmark's on the latter, but Walter Damrosch, as he explained to the audience, found Glazounow's unsuited to his program scheme, and as for the Sunday change, to whatever it may have been due, one can give hearty thanks for the substitution of a great piece for a very tedious one. Beethoven's concert, oldest and greatest of the laurelled three, Miss Parlow had already played at the Beethoven concert of the Symphony Society.
37Great the Brahms concerto surely is, but it is as taxing on the performer as it is great. For a young girl to master its technical problems and at the same time to plumb the depths of its emotional and intellectual significance would be, indeed, miraculous. In ten years Miss Parlow will doubtless play it with larger comprehension than she did yesterday, but even if her interpretation did not always go far below the surface (especially in parts of the first movement) it was always sincere and musically, and her technical proficiency deserved all the enthusiasm it evoked from the audience, which scarcely refrained from disrupting the first movement with applause at the close of the cadenza (not the familiar one by Joachim, but the longer and still more difficult one by Leopold Auer).—New York Globe, March 13, 1911.
39The soloist was Kathleen Parlow, the young Canadian violinist, who was heard once before this season at these concerts. She played the difficult Brahms concerto, and added to the reputation for skill and brilliancy which she has achieved.—Brooklyn Eagle, March 13, 1911.
41Edna Gunnar Peterson's Career.
43Edna Gunnar Peterson, who won a place among the young Chicago pianists at her debut in Chicago at the concert given under the auspices of the Amateur Musical Club last October, has been chosen representative of the admitted to the Amateur Musical Club, being its youngest member. When Mr. Ganz became a resident of Berlin in 1906, Miss Peterson joined his class in that city. During her four years in Berlin she studied harmony and the German and French languages in addition to her advanced piano courses.
45Miss Peterson made her Berlin debut February 12, 1910, in Beethoven Hall with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Dr. Ernst Kunwald, director. On this occasion she played Mendelssohn's B minor "Capriccio," Chopin's E minor concerto and a concertstück composed and conducted by Mr. Ganz. Her success was so great that she was engaged for a second appearance with the same orchestra, and on April 20, she again played the Ganz "Concertstück," and with him the Mozart concerto for two pianos and orchestra. Since her return to Chicago, Miss Peterson has been kept very busy teaching in her studio in the Fine Arts Building and furnishing programs, at many private functions and in out-of-town recitals.
47Gabrilowitsch Plays with Safonoff.
49The sixth of the regular series of concerts held at the Kurhaus in Wiesbaden was a Russian evening, the conductor being Wassily von Safonoff, of Moscow, and the soloist the well known pianist, Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Below are a few press opinions of Gabrilowitsch's playing:
51The soloist of the evening, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, was worthy of all praise. He played the Chopin E minor concerto with irresistible bravura, and a virtuosity which awoke interest not only on account of his superficial brilliancy, but also through the innumerable fine gradations of touch and the deep inner feeling. The player responded to the enthusiastic applause of the public by playing the Gluck-Brahms A major gavotte, which, with its wonderful beauty of sound, was also a masterpiece of piano playing.—Tageblatt, Wiesbaden, December 17, 1910.
53Ossip Gabrilowitsch will ever be welcome at the Kurhaus concerts in Wiesbaden, for he is an exceptional artist. He played the Chopin E minor concerto, and proved himself to be a chosen interpreter of the master's works. His touch is clear and meaningful, his nuances delicate and poetic, his runs and figures light and elegant, and he overcomes all difficulties with surety and command—a master of technic. The fine, clear beauty of tone in the second movement, the romance, was astonishing. The rondo gave splendid opportunity for the display of his ripe, commanding technic. There was no pause between the stormy close of the sonata and the jubilant outbreak of applause from the audience. The artist was called out again and again, and acknowledged his thanks through a splendid rendition of the Gluck-Brahms gavotte.—Genera! Anzeiger, Wiesbaden, December 17, 1910.
55The soloist was Ossip Gabrilowitsch, one of our best modern pianists; an artist in whom all the best qualities—real musical feeling, brilliant technic, irresistible rhythm, varied interpretation, and a finely graduated touch—are combined in such a high degree, that the regret was general that he could only be heard in one number, the Chopin E minor concerto. We hope that the management of the Kurhaus concerts will be able to secure him again soon, and for a whole evening's program. The conductor, Wassily von Safonoff, and Gabrilowitsch were overwhelmed with applause, so much so that the latter was compelled to give an encore.—Wiesbadener Zeitung, December 17, 1910.
57Over Ossip Gabrilowitsch as a master of technic and touch there is nothing new to be said. His style combines a steelylike strength and power with delicate lightness and eminent technical and intellectual virtuosity. A genius for piano playing, which makes itself known through largeness of interpretation, fine taste, and a finished style.—Rheinische Volkszeitung, Weishaden, December 17, 1910.
59New Orleans Music.
61NEW ORLEANS, La., March 17, 1911.
63The joint concert of Cecil Fanning, Harriet Ware and Harry B. Turpin was one of the most delightful entertainments of the season. The large audience that assembled in the Athanæum was not remiss in demonstrating its appreciation of the unusual artistic combination offered it. Cecil Fanning's art is well known and liked here, the young baritone counting his admirers by large numbers. He proved his striking versatility by singing a characteristic program in a manner that made the minutes speed by too quickly, and again displayed that wealth of tone coloring, temperament and charm which have made him a conspicuous figure in the concert field. Mr. Fanning was not spared by his appreciative listeners, and had to grant not less than six encores. Harry B. Turpin gave the artist admirable support at the piano. He has become to this singer what Conrad von Bos is to Dr. Wüllner.
65Harriet Ware, to whose compositions was dedicated the entire second part of the program, made a profound impression not only by the intrinsic merit of her work, but by her captivating personality. She played her tone poem "Song of the Sea" exquisitely, and immediately had her audience en rapport with her. Her songs, sung by Mr. Fanning to her own accompaniment, held the large gathering of music lovers spellbound. Miss Ware's work cannot but appeal strongly to those who delight in the best and most sincere in music.
67Berthald to Tour with Tetrazzini.
69Barron Berthald, the grand opera tenor, has been engaged to sing with Madame Tetrazzini on her present Eastern tour.
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