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Musical Courier 1926-04-22: Vol 92 Iss 16, 1926
70 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1LINDSBORG'S FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL FESTIVAL PROVES ANOTHER ARTISTIC SUCCESS
3Chorus of 500 Sing The Messiah—Flonzaley Quartet and Claire Dux Give Programs—Chamber Music, Orchestra and Band Concerts—Excellent Soloists
5LINDSBORG, KANS.—For forty-five years Lindsborg has held an annual music festival during Easter Week. Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday marked the 131st, 132nd, and 133rd renditions of Handel's Messiah by the Bethany Oratorio Society of five hundred voices, and the Bethany Symphony Orchestra of fifty members. The renditions were of the usual high standard, Haggard Brase leading his forces with inspiration and masterly control. The chorus is solid and brilliant in the mass effects without becoming strident, fluent and buoyant in the figural passages, impressive in the numbers calling for more subtle expressive qualities, with a spirit of religious fervor always dominant. The orchestra, as an integral part of the Oratorio Society, with Arthur Uhe as concertmaster and Arvid Wallin at the organ, is highly efficient and contributes in large measure to the success of the performance. The soloists were very satisfactory. Mrs. Agnes Clark-Glaister, soprano, of Denver, Colorado, rose to fine heights of oratorio singing in the aria, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth. Mrs. Raymond Havens of Kansas City, Mo., in her rich, colorful contralto sang He Was Despised and He Shall Feed His Flocks, with simplicity and expressive appeal. Carleton Cummings of Chicago gave Every Valley Shall be Exalted, and He Shall Dash Them, in good style, with conviction and well defined figurations. Sigurd Nilssen of New York City has a deep bass of resonant quality and was heard effectively in Thus Saith the Lord, and But Who May Abide.
7FLONZALEY QUARTET
9The Flonzaley Quartet opened the festival on the afternoon of Palm Sunday. The aesthetic interpretations of this organization, embodying technical finish, sensitiveness of feeling, tonal color and resiliency of rhythm, come as near perfection as is humanly possible. The quartet in C major by Mozart was given with delicacy and charm, a fine feeling for nuances and beautifully molded phrases, chaste in purity and simplicity of style. Schumann's quartet in A minor brought forth the resources of the Flonzaleys to full advantage, offering opportunity for moods of passionate depth, intimate expression, and a broad sweep of outline with a range of color that seemed hardly possible from only four instruments. The audience was very appreciative and generous with applause. Three encores were given.
11FACULTY RECITAL
13A Faculty Recital, Tuesday afternoon, was well received. Irene Houdek sang beautifully The Answer, by Terry, The Soldier's Bride by Rachmaninoff, and a Swedish folk song. Benjamin Tilberg did some very fine work in the aria, It Is Enough, from Mendelssohn's Elijah. Duets from Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute by Mozart were heard to good advantage. Miss Houdek and Mr. Tilberg have excellent voices and sing with 'musical feeling and sincerity. Oscar Thorsen presented a group of Bach Chorales transcribed by Busoni. His interpretations were artistic, broad, dignified and thoroughly consistent with the Bach spirit. The Chopin Nocturne was given with tonal variety, and the Alla ballato, Scriabin, brought forth the bravura qualities of Mr. Thorsen's playing. The three performers received many recalls.
15BAND CONCERTS
17Bethany Band, under Hjalmar Wetterstrom's direction, gave an enjoyable program Tuesday night. The band is in good shape, playing even better than usual. Especially interesting was the selection of Songs from Finland. Walter Brown, who has built up a large wood-wind section, played a clarinet solo, rendered with ease and brilliant execution. Carleton Cummings intersected the program with two song groups. He has a splendid voice, well adapted to the lyric as well as the heroic styles. In the operatic aria, The Stars Were Brightly Shining, from Puccini's La Tosca, Mr. Cummings fairly gripped the audience with the dramatic intensity of his delivery, portraying the tragic content with fervor and abandon. He gave several encores.
19CONSERVATORY ORCHESTRA
21The Conservatory Orchestra, under Mrs. Walter Brown's direction, has steadily improved in the quality of its work. The program presented Wednesday morning was of high standard, consisting of Bach classics and numbers by Grieg, Beethoven, Mozart. The performance was good, with the Grieg numbers outstanding. Pauline Gleason is concertmaster.
23SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CONCERT
25Bethany Symphony Orchestra, with Hjalmar Wetterstrom as conductor, gave the program Wednesday night. Mrs. Walter Brown, concertmaster, carried her part efficiently. The orchestra consists of home talent and its successful renditions may be attributed in a large measure to the string section which is recruited from Arthur Uhe's large depart-
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29BOOS AND HISSES GREET NEW VARESE WORK PLAYED BY THE PHILADELPHIANS
31Conductor Stokowsky Changes Order of Program and Many Miss Hearing Entire Work—Final New York Concert Again Reveals Magnificent Playing of Orchestra
33A goodly number of those who went to Carnegie Hall on April 13 to hear the first performance in New York of something called Les Amerique, and written by Edgar Varese, had to hear it through such cracks between swinging doors as were available. Without a word to anybody Leopold Stokowsky changed the order of his program, playing Les Ameriques first, instead of second as announced—an unpleasant and impolite trick which he has played on his subscribers two or three other times this season. The result was that a considerable number of the audience, plus two or three of the daily paper critics, plus the MUSICAL COURIER staff writer, heard merely such portions of Les Ameriques as drifted out into the foyers—considerable portions, however, since there was very little quiet and retiring about it. Such portions as were audible sounded like unutterable rot—clichés from everybody between Richard Strauss and Stra-
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37STRAVINSKY AND PFITZNER VISIT VIENNA AND AROUSE ENTHUSIASM OF MUSICIANS
39Paul von Klenau Conducts St. Matthew Passion—Honegger's Engine Arrives Late—Alban Berg's Wozzeck Lands Like a Bomb—Vahdah Gara Returns
41VIENNA.—While this is a month of exotic guests, both in opera and concert, visitors of really international fame are comparatively rare. When Igor Stravinsky arrived he caused a sensation, and a packed house awaited him. The big attendance was as great a surprise to the audience as to the promoters, and no doubt the deft newspaper campaign of that clever concert agent, Georg Kugel, was largely responsible for the sudden interest of the public. Thanks also to this press agenting, Stravinsky, whose name but yesterday created horror and awe in the breast of the average concert-goer of Vienna, has suddenly become an artistic and social fad.
43The program, however, was not exciting. It consisted of the Song of the Volga Boatmen; the Petrouchka Suite and the Firebird Suite, which Dirk Foch, the conductor of the occasion, had only three weeks previously served up to his Konzertverein subscribers, and, of course, Stravinsky's piano concerto, that venture into neo-Bachism trimmed with a bit of "linear counterpoint." That was the weak spot of the evening, as far as the public was concerned. Vienna grew enthusiastic enough over the rest, but it swallowed the concerto rather reluctantly, and only innate politeness toward the famous composer himself prevented the otherwise unavoidable "row."
45THAT PAN-GERMAN ROMANTICISM
47Another exotic guest was Hans Pfitzner. He comes from the land of the long beards and big black hats which have come to be the inevitable paraphernalia of Teuton manhood, so foreign to the Austrian temperament. Pfitzner has dropped his symbolic chin-beard, to be sure, and now presents himself like any other mortal being. He has not, however, relinquished his old hatred against the "musical futurists," and still indulges in abundant invectives against the modernists. It is the patriotic German mentality of ill-remembered war manifestos that speaks from Pfitzner's militant book on the New Aesthetics of Musical Impotence. But he who sits in a glass-house should not throw stones. No other living composer of renown is more exposed to the reproach of creative "impotence" than this retrospective professor. Whatever he has written in recent years is dry, and dull; he finds glowing colors only for some of his militaristic compositions of the Männerchor variety.
49KLENAU'S ST. MATTHEW'S PASSION
51The annual Easter performance of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion under the direction of Paul von Klenau, with the Singakademie Chorus, has become a fixture in the musical life of the city. It is a real holiday, a sort of Bayreuth in a big metropolis. On no other occasion, perhaps, does one find in the mundane Grosser Konzerthaus Saal as many world-removed listeners, carried away by the beauty of the work and the performance, their faces buried in the vocal score. It is a service at the shrine of great art, only perhaps more liberally attended than such services usually are. The hall was twice sold out and hundreds were turned away without being able to obtain tickets.
53Klenau surpassed himself in his reverential and enthusiastic reading of the immortal score. The choruses generally were beautifully sung, and the closing scenes overwhelming in their beauty. Hans Duhau was wonderful as Christ, Rose Walter, soprano; Emmi Leisner, contralto; Antoni Kohmann, tenor; and Oskar Jölli, basso, were the other soloists.
55ORCHESTRAL "NOVELTIES"
57That brave engine, Honegger's Pacific 231, has at last reached Vienna. For once its speed failed, and it reached here with the delay which foreign travelers have come to expect from Austrian railroads. Nor was its effect as elec-
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61NEW OPERAS AND REVIVALS AT THE METROPOLITAN
63General Manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza announces that the novelties for the next Metropolitan Opera Season (1926-27) will be as follows: The King's Henchman, opera in three acts, libretto by Edna St. Vincent Millay, music by Deems Taylor, in English; Turandot, opera in three acts, by Renato Simoni and Giuseppe Adami, music by Giacomo Puccini, in Italian; La Giara, chorographic comedy in one act, libretto by Luigi Pirandello, music by Alfredo Casella.
65The revivals are: Di Zauberkflöte, by Wolfgang A. Mozart, in German; Fidelio, by Beethoven, in German; Mignon, by Ambroise Thomas, in French. The following works will again be presented: L'Amore dei Tre Re, by Montemezzi, in Italian; Rosenkavalier, by Richard Strauss, in German; Le Coq d'Or, by Rimsky-Korsakov, in French; La Forza del Destino, by Giuseppe Verdi, in Italian.
67Appended to the list was the following note: "Mr. Gatti requests that there be no speculation as to the casts for the foregoing operas, as this matter is quite undecided and the suggestion that such or such artist be chosen for such or such role often causes embarrassment to the director and pain to singers who find themselves disappointed."
69In view of this request, the MUSICAL COURIER will refrain from saying that Mme. Jeritza will sing the title role in Turandot, and that it is highly probable that Marion Talley will sing the roles of Filena in Mignon, and the part of the Queen in Le Coq d'Or. Also that Rosa Ponselle will doubtless sing the role of Leonora in La Forza del Destino, the part in which she made her sensational debut at the Metropolitan in a cast with Enrico Caruso, whose place is likely to be taken by Giovanni Martinelli.
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