Books › Musical Courier 1927-04-07: Vol 94 Iss 14, 1927 › scan 11
Scan 11
Musical Courier 1927-04-07: Vol 94 Iss 14, 1927
62 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 12. See the scan on archive.org.
1NEW YORK CONCERTS
3MARCH 28
5Beethoven Association
6The Beethoven Association presented a scintillating array of artists for its sixth concert at Town Hall on March 28. The program was all Beethoven, given in honor of the centenary of the death of that famous composer.
8The program began with the playing of the Grand Fugue, for four hands, but performed on two pianos for the sake of convenience. The artists were Harold Bauer and Walter Damrosch. George Meader, tenor, of the Metropolitan, with Ernest Hutcheson at the piano, sang Adelaide. Paul Kochansky, violinist, played the Romance in G, with Walter Damrosch at the piano. Povla Frijs, "the new Swedish nightingale," as she has been called, sang a group of four songs. James Friskin was her accompanist. Harold Bauer collaborated with Carl Flesch, violinist, in rendering the Romance in F.
10All of the artists were in rare form, so that any description that might be offered would start with superlatives and go from that to super-superlatives. There was such an array of talent presented that it was bewildering, a feeling which the final offering did nothing to alleviate. This was the Veränderungen variations, thirty-three in number, in which eleven artists and four pianos participated. The pianists were: Harold Bauer, James Friskin, Wilhelm Furtwaengler, Rudolph Ganz, Ernest Hutcheson, Josef Lhevinne, Yolanda Mero, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Harold Randolph, Ernest Schelling and Sigismund Stojowski. Artur Bodanzky, originally scheduled to appear, sent his regrets while a sudden indisposition compelled Walter Damrosch to forego his part. Furtwaengler was a happy and unexpected addition. In spite of the continual changing of pianists, and pianos, the total effect was astonishingly smooth. It is safe to say that the good old thirty-three variations never before had received such diversified treatment of technic and mood during the course of a single performance.
12Zion Church Benefit
13A benefit performance for the Zion Church Fund was given at Steinway Hall on March 28, the program being made up of all Wagner compositions and featuring Nils Nelson, pianist; Martha Muehlhausen, soprano; Gisella Neu, violinist; Max Bloch, tenor; Valeska Wagner, contralto; Arnold Gabor, baritone; and Elsa Fiedler, pianist. This program was diversified, due to the many artists performing, and was given an effect of coherence by a warm sympathetic interpretation throughout. Messrs. Bloch and Gabor amply upheld their Metropolitan reputations, while fine individual performances were given by Miss Wagner, Miss Muehlhausen, and Mr. Nelson. Particularly interesting was the virtuosity displayed by the talented Miss Neu, who showed a complete mastery of her instrument and a tonality of rare beauty. Miss Fiedler occupied the post of honor, playing the Fliegende Hollaender and the solo from Die Walküre with great expressiveness.
15American Orchestral Society
16Chalmers Clifton has developed the players of the American Orchestral Society into such ability that they performed the difficult second symphony by Brahms at the March 28 concert, Aeolian Hall, most successfully. There was clear orchestral volume throughout the work, and the Good Friday Spell was likewise well played. Katherine Bacon playing Saint-Saëns' G minor concerto, was given excellent orchestral support; she played the Bach-like introduction with splendid stylistic breadth, the scherzo with utmost speed and lightness, and throughout the work the crashing chords and pearly scales were features, and at the close she was thrice recalled. Much the same characteristics were in her playing of Edward Burlingame Hill's Divertimento (first time), given with considerable modernistic freedom of harmony and form. The large audience thoroughly enjoyed the entire concert.
18Walter Gieseking
19Walter Gieseking played his last New York recital of the season on March 28 at Carnegie Hall. This musical messiah drew a large house of disciples who came to hear miracles performed, and were not disappointed. The brooding passion of his imagination and the ethereal lightness of his touch were never more evidenced than in this last recital. He has left to the pianistic world a goal to be striven for—an unattainable goal except for the elect few. The Bach Partita in B flat major, which opened the program, was not played as a specialty, but as music. The Beethoven so-called Moonlight Sonata which followed was played as the colossal music drama that it is. This sonata has suffered at the hands of students because of the comparative lack of technical difficulties, but as performed by Gieseking nothing produced at the Metropolitan is more thrilling. The Kinderscenen of Schumann, Children's Corner of Debussy and F sharp minor sonata of Scriabin comprised the rest of the program. This great artist plays Music, not variations by Gieseking. Even the encores, which were legion, were bits of perfection, not just the things he had not practised lately. Altogether it was a memorable afternoon.
21Efrem Zimbalist
22At Carnegie Hall, March 28, Efrem Zimbalist gave his last recital in New York before departing for the Orient. There was a capacity audience as was to have been expected. The program opened with the Brahms sonata in D minor, op. 108; then followed Reger's A major sonata, for violin alone. A third group held selections by Saint-Saëns, Zimbalist, Aulin, Tchaikowsky and Sarasate. There were encores enough to duplicate the program. The artist again delighted his hearers by the nobility of his style, the purity of his tone, flexibility and lightness of technic, and that reverence for the composer which has made the art of Zimbalist a notable one, all this coupled with his own refinement and intelligence. The ovation tendered him must have gratified even one so accustomed to popular favor as Mr. Zimbalist, for it was given without restraint and by an audience that held many musical celebrities. His accompaniments were excellently played by Emanuel Bay, whose fine work has been noted at former recitals. one of two readings
23At Carnegie Hall, March 28, Efrem Zimbalist gave his last recital in New York before departing for the Orient. There was a capacity audience as was to have been expected. The program opened with the Brahms sonata in D minor, op. 108; then followed Reger's A major sonata, for violin alone. A third group held selections by Saint-Saëns, Zimbalist, Aulin, Tschaikowsky and Sarasate. There were encores enough to duplicate the program. The artist again delighted his hearers by the nobility of his style, the purity of his tone, flexibility and lightness of technic, and that reverence for the composer which has made the art of Zimbalist a notable one, all this coupled with his own refinement and intelligence. The ovation tendered him must have gratified even one so accustomed to popular favor as Mr. Zimbalist, for it was given without restraint and by an audience that held many musical celebrities. His accompaniments were excellently played by Emanuel Bay, whose fine work has been noted at former recitals. one of two readings
25MARCH 29
27Saint Cecilia Club
28Probably the largest audience that ever gathered in the great ball-room of the Waldorf-Astoria was that which attended the second concert of the twenty-first season of the Saint Cecilia Club on March 29. Victor Harris of course conducted as usual, and did so with his accustomed extraordinary mastery which has placed this organization among the best women's choral societies in the world. The program opened with the Invocation to St. Cecilia composed by Victor Harris for the club in 1914. Following this there was an arrangement of three parts of Grieg's Peer Gynt suite, Dawn's Awakening, In Autumn and Anita's Dance. The most important number on the program and by far the most beautiful was a choral arrangement of Wagner's Dreams, and although the program does not say so, one suspects that the choral arrangement was made by Victor Harris himself. However that may be, the arrangement is splendid and the exquisite music got its full due with the chorus accompanied by a small orchestra.
30There were some amusing features on this program, among them a chorus entitled Little Clock by Frank V. Van Der Stucken, in which a part of the chorus made from the beginning to the end of the piece a monotonous tick-tock to which the balance of the chorus sang a musical setting. This absurd musical caricature had to be repeated.
32Amusing also was Arthur Sullivan's familiar Cachucha and Finale from The Gondoliers so well known that it needs no description. In the second part of the program Deems Taylor's well known cantata, The Highwayman, was given, and the final number on the program was a composition by Cecil Forsyth entitled To America, set to a worth-while poem by Alfred Austin.
34It seems to this writer that to remark at this time upon the excellencies of the St. Cecilia chorus would certainly be superfluous. All that can be said has been said so many times in the past that nothing remains but repetitions of the same somewhat hackneyed phrases. One can but repeat, as was stated above, that there is no chorus anywhere, so far as this writer knows, the superior of this one, organized so many years ago by Mr. Harris and built up by him to the fine perfection it has attained.
36Mischa Levitzki
37Carnegie Hall held a large evening audience of Levitzki admirers, who were on hand both to enjoy his art, and to bid him "au revoir, but not good-bye," for the occasion marked his farewell recital in New York, prior to a European, Oriental, and Antipodean tour, which will engage him in foreign parts for about two years.
39Levitzki made his latest appearance here a matter of high artistic enjoyment for his listeners. His talents were at their most brilliant height, and he gave them free play. The result, as may be imagined, was a series of ovations for the popular pianist, who had to add more than half a dozen encores before his auditors consented to be appeased.
41He opened his program with a deeply musical reading of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and there followed a rippling and delightfully crisp performance of Scarlatti's sonata in A major.
43Schumann's stupendous Etudes Symphoniques brought out all the breadth of interpretation, the temperamental resource; and the technical command of which Levitzki is master. It was a prodigious achievement.
45Chopin's F minor Fantasia, in lovely presentation, opened the Chopin group, which wound up rousingly with the A flat polonaise.
47A novelty was Chasins' Keyboard Karikatures, which were described on the program, as, "a pianist improvising, after a contemplation of the masters Rachmaninoff and Godowsky, in an expression of his reactions to them, utilizing their manner only to pay homage to their greatness. . . . a jeu d'esprit in which a sense of humor combines with a respectful appreciation."
49The styles of the two composers were parodied cleverly, and with a keenly musical sense of fun.
51Another unfamiliar number was a valse-caprice, Diablette, by Buzzi-Peccia, a charmingly melodious, well made, and rhythmically and harmonically fetching work, with delicate (but delightful) touches of modernistic coloring.
53Rubinstein's Staccato Etude, one of Levitzki's faithful war horses, was a veritable shower of glittering execution, and Liszt's twelfth Rhapsody closed the program in similar stimulative fashion.
55Bon voyage, and a safe return to Mischa Levitzki.
57Joseph Yasser
58Joseph Yasser, Russian organist, formerly director of the organ department of the Moscow Conservatory of Music, gave a recital on the great organ in the Wanamaker Auditorium on March 29. He played an arrangement of Liszt's Totentanz made by himself, this being a set of fantastic variations on the mediaeval chant of the Dies Irae. Following this he played works by Purcell, Weidenhagen, Debussy, Bach, Bossi, Yon and Liszt, and one of his own very attractive compositions entitled Moment Extatique. Mr. Yasser proved himself to be an organist of brilliant attainment and was enthusiastically applauded by a large audience.
60Jeanne Le Vinus
61An interesting recital was that of Jeanne Le Vinus, pupil of Hilda Grace Gelling, at Steinway Hall on March 29. The program included an operatic aria, German, French and English songs, and her rendition of them proved that she is at her best in the more dramatic things, those in which she can give her powerful mezzo soprano voice full sway. In fact, hers is a voice which would be heard to better advantage in a larger hall than Steinway. In her second group Miss Le Vinus was most at home in the Brahms and Schumann numbers, not exactly feeling sure of herself nor of the mood in Reger's Mariä Wiegengl. As the program progressed Miss Le Vinus' nervousness disappeared, and in her fourth group she sang Hue's J'ai Pleuré en Rêve with such dramatic intensity that it aroused the audience to enthusiastic applause. Ill Neige came as a decided contrast, and was so well received that it was repeated. In the final group, Francisco de Nogero's My
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