Scan 4
Musical Courier 1927-10-27: Vol 95 Iss 17, 1927
56 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1KRENEK'S JAZZ OPERA HAS FIRST BERLIN PERFORMANCE
3Ovation Greets Klemperer's Appearance as New Director—Delius' Mass of Life Has Successful Premiere—Schönberg's Quartet the Sensation of Coolidge Concert—Theremin Gives Berlin Concert With His New "Air" Apparatus—Richard Crooks Wins Public Favor—Government Fosters School Music
5BERLIN.—Ernest Krenek's sensational opera, Jonny Spieltan, has now reached Berlin on its express journey to about fifty opera houses, all of which are eager to produce it as quickly as possible. This tremendous success has been attained in the nine months following the première in Leipzig. Indeed, the Union of the Berlin Press, the most exclusive and prominent organization of its kind, has even considered Jonny a suitable work for its beneficiary fund entertainment. The Union has bought the whole theater for the first two performances, selling the tickets at considerably higher prices than usual, thus earning the right to call them "festival" performances. As a result the foreign press, and even many Berlin and other German papers, had to wait until the third performance, as there were no tickets available earlier.
7How are these strange and unworthy methods to be explained? Has the jazz fever, which rages so furiously in Krenek's opera, also seized the serious and influential leaders of the Berlin press? Is Krenek's opera an event of such extraordinary importance as to warrant business methods of so unusual a kind? Of course the première was a brilliant, sensational affair, but it appeared afterwards that the musical critics of Berlin were by no means enthusiastic in their judgment.
9In short, Jonny has not been taken seriously as a work of art. This opera is a compound of operetta, vaudeville and revue, with a little real opera mixed in. With its grotesque story, its appeal to the vulgar, its display of all the fads of the present day, musically and scenically, it is expressly made for the general public of today. Its popular success has proven Krenek correct in his clever speculation and there can be no doubt that Jonny is the big operatic hit of the season.
11LOW-BROW OPERA
13Everybody wants to see the nigger-fiddler with the insatiable love for fair women and for money acquired in any way whatsoever. Everybody is eager to hear the spicy jazz music, to wonder at the locomotive and the railroad station on the stage, the luxurious hall of the Paris hotel, the glacier in Switzerland, the voice of the glacier, Anita's voice from the megaphone, the motor-car with the sleeping policeman, etc., etc. Krenek, who was his own librettist, has become very liberal-minded of late. There is apparently nothing left of his high aims and love of art for art's sake. Our young master gives the people what they want, descending to the mental level of the crowd. He does this with a great theatrical talent, with astonishing musical skill, in an amusing, but entirely unscrupulous manner, and calls his product "modern opera." Like Wagner he even writes pamphlets, explaining that it is necessary to come in touch with the people again, and that popularity is the great aim. Thus he succeeds in becoming popular, but the art in his commercially flourishing enterprise remains exceedingly questionable.
15The Berlin performance at the Municipal Opera was sensationaly brilliant in its scenic make-up. Karl Heinz Martin, regisseur and director of the variety show department, must be named first. Georg Sebastian, the very young conductor, did full justice to the taxing demands of the score. Of the singers Ludwig Hoffman, as Jonny, was boisterously acclaimed, and when he sang, with a voice like thunder, of Old Europe about to be swallowed by America and its dances, an extra storm of applause arose, as if the public of Berlin delighted in the prospect of being swallowed up by New York.
17Göta Ljungberg and Margret Pfahl-Wallerstein made as much as possible of the two splendid specimens of female eroticism allotted to them. Wilhelm Guttmann was the violin virtuoso, Daniello, the victim of Jonny, and Max Burgwinkel sang Max, the serious composer, the romantic dreamer who in the end is fooled by everybody. Young Krenek shows us in the figure of Max the type of artist from whom the creator of Jonny would like to be as far removed as possible—a sort of negative self-portrait with ample evidences of a cynical turn of mind.
19SCHNABEL-KLEMPERER PERFORMANCE SUBLIME
21Otto Klemperer, the new director of the second Berlin State Opera, the "Opera at the Square of the Republic," has made his debut as conductor of the State Orchestra. This gifted musician has long been a favorite with the Berlin public, but the demonstration with which he was received was beyond all expectations. The haute volée of Berlin's society and the chief representatives of the musical profession greeted him at the start, at the close and between the single numbers of the program with an extraordinary, festive enthusiasm of the most genuine and heart-felt intensity. Bach's famous Suite in D-major was played in an entirely unsentimental, plain and straightforward manner, without the least artificiality, but with an unsurpassable art and technical perfection. Mozart's piano concerto in D-minor, with Artur Schnabel at the piano, was performed with an intuitive feeling for Mozart's soft grace and for the nobility of his expressive melody, bordering on the sublime.
23The closing number of the program was Léos Janáček's new sinfonietta, played for the first time in Berlin. In this work, Janáček, at the age of seventy-three, has written some very youthful music. In character it is more like a suite than a symphony, but full of surprising, charming, picturesque orchestral effects, and, of course, abounding in quaint and expressive popular melodies of native Bohemian flavor. There is no doubt that Janáček is the legitimate successor of Smetana and Dvorák. His effective sinfonietta is sure to become popular in all symphonic concerts and will probably be the hit of the coming season. It was given a brilliant rendering by Klemperer. The composer, who was present, was called and recalled with persevering vigor at least ten times.
25KARL SCHURICHT'S SUCCESS
27Karl Schuricht, for a number of years conductor of the Wiesbaden Symphony Orchestra, will display his art before a more extended public this winter. America will have occasion to be a really American season. The short Jeritza season at the Staatsoper was American in more senses than one, for the radiant Mitzi of yore is now something of an American visitor of distinction in her old home; and American indeed was the Metropolitan-made tabloid version that the sprightly diva gave of Korngold's Die tote Stadt. Likewise American were the first recitalists of the season, the Utica Jubilee Singers, and the soprano, Margherita Marsden. And again American, the season's most significant event so far, the Coolidge Concerts given under the auspices of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge at the Konzerthaus.
29Nothing seems more miraculous, more enigmatic to the Central European mentality than the figure of this enthusiastic fighter for and,—what is more important—generous supporter of modern musical effort. Vague, unverified rumors had been spread from time to time of $1,000 prizes and of something called the Pittsfield Chamber Festival. None but the young composers and prospective prize winners, however, knew anything definite. Now that Mrs. Coolidge herself appeared in the flesh there was no end of wondering as to the motives of her activity.
31Social ambitions? Nothing in the appearance of this genial, unaffected, enthusiastic, unworldly woman suggested such a possibility. What, then, was the moving power of the Coolidge activity, of this enterprise which undertook to import modern music into Europe? Finally, the good Viennese, with the Esterhazys and Rasumowskys subconsciously lingering in their memory, agreed upon a formula which was intelligible enough. It was simply a case of history repeating itself; of modern financial aristocracy taking up the traditions and privileges of old roccoco nobility; to keep court composers, as it were, to play the part of a Macenas for the Haydns and Beethovens to be. Thus, by the time the two big audiences had assembled at the Konzerthaus to hear the chamber concerts accessible "to invited guests only," all doubts and curiosity had given way to a feeling of expectation.
33THE MISSING LINK
35It still remains doubtful whether a new Haydn or Beethoven was among the unknown composers whose works we heard, indeed whether any new geniuses had been discovered at all. Men like Schönberg, Respighi, or Malipiero needed no "discovery," of course. More so the others, however, Frank Bridge, Charles Martin Loeffler and Frederick Jacobi—names totally or almost totally unknown here before.
37Bridge's quartet, opening the series, exemplified modern British music, a commodity regarded here with some misgivings as lacking "organic evolution." Little or nothing of British music had been heard here for years until the modernists, the Blisses, Baxes, Berners' and Bridges sprang into prominence. Bridge is a homo novus, as far as we are concerned in Austria. Unable, therefore, to scrutinize the verdict of his countrymen—who pronounced his Quartet No. 3 his best, by far, from their point of view—we judge it absolutely, not relatively, and find it a piece of excellent workmanship with clear and well developed themes, but on
39GEZA DE KRESZ, VIOLINIST, AND NORAH DREWETT DE KRESZ, PIANIST,
40who gave their first New York recital of the season on October 23, and whose second recital will be given on the evening of November 6 with a program of sonatas by Jarnach, Bach and Brahms.
42RETURNING MUSICAL WANDERERS
43(Ship News by the Special Musical Courier Quarantine Reporter.)
45NEW YORK, October 24.—Jack Waller, London producer, gave his endorsement of American music and musical shows this week when he arrived on the Aquitania seeking four or five musical productions to take back to England. This is his fourth annual visit. Last year he took abroad four successes. Irene Scharrer, pianist, arrived on the same ship to open her concert season at Town Hall, November 1, and to fill contracts with the Chicago and Detroit orchestras.
47Passengers on the Ile de France claimed that the seamen's fund benefit concert, aboard this boat the day before reaching port was the outstanding musical event of the Atlantic Ocean for the season. The volunteer artists were Adam Didur, Giuseppe De Luca, Cesare Formichi, Grace Holst and Pavel Ludikar. Constance Talmage presented the artists.
49Didur was returning for his nineteenth season at the Metropolitan, after being awarded the decoration of Polonia Restituta this past summer by President Pilsudski of Poland in recognition of his war work with Paderewski and benefit concerts in Poland.
51De Luca returned with his wife after twelve concerts in Rome, Berlin and Prague. He hurried from the ship to catch a train for Nashville to fill a concert engagement. From Nashville he is scheduled to hurry back for the Atwater Kent radio hour, then a concert in New London, then begin rehearsals with the Metropolitan, all within his first week home.
53Formichi, returning for thirty concerts and the Chicago Opera, sang over one of the biggest radio hook-ups from London on September 5 and was heard by listeners-in all over that side of the world, he reported.
55Grace Holst returned from a visit to her Norway home and a concert tour of Europe, including a special concert
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