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Musical Courier 1928-03-01: Vol 96 Iss 9, 1928
84 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 8. See the scan on archive.org.
1Are Paris Orchestras on the Brink of Bankruptcy?
3Brailowsky Packs the Opera House—Levitzki’s Paris Debut a Triumph—A Family Recital.
5Paris.—I have heard it said in business circles that when a firm is about to go bankrupt it indulges in an orgy of extravagance. Perhaps that is what is wrong with the orchestral life of Paris. The old orchestras are struggling for a bare existence, playing very often to half filled halls, repeating old programs which do not require much rehearsing, dragging out an existence in the hopes of better days to come. Yet new orchestras and musical societies are springing up on all sides.
7Why not combine and concentrate? The famous orchestra of the Conservatoire is now a century old, and the orchestras of Lamoureux and of Colonne and of Pasdeloup have about fifty years behind them. The Straram orchestra is quite new, having started some three seasons ago. Still more recent is the Philharmonique, and now the Poulet orchestra plays in the new Pleyel Hall on Sunday afternoons. These are the orchestras of the first class. I recently attended a concert in a very large hall at which one of these first class orchestras played to a pitiful handful of an audience.
9Still No Money For Music
11The wail of the Ancient Mariner about “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” might easily be changed into a conductor’s wail of “Money, money everywhere, but not a cent to spend.” On all sides Paris is putting up magnificent hotels and superb apartments at a lavish expenditure, but with little attention to the needs of musicians, in spite of the appeal of the “Société d’aide à la musique.” This society was recently founded to combat the decadence of French music. Probably the root of the matter lies in the great increase in the cost of living. The milder luxury of music must suffer for the fiercer luxury of war.
13Vincenzo Davico recently gave a lecture with music at the Sorbonne, the famous college which has long been a center of intellectual life in France. The subject of the lecture-recital was Some Contemporary Musicians of Italy, and the musicians proved to be Vincenzo Davico, Pratella, Pizzetti, Bruschettini, Santoliquido, Casella, Coppola, A. Veretti, Respighi, Mortari, Rocca, Castelnuovo, and Pick-Mangagalli. I hardly think that any of the composers represented will eventually rank as high as the old Scarlatti of the harpsichord sonatas, and I feel certain that if the ancient Casella whom Dante wrote about could have heard his modern namesake he would lament with me that the tendency of nearly all modern composers is to lose their national flavor and become indistinguishably international.
15Another Sorbonne lecture, given by M. R. de Maratray, was called The Song before Schumann. The musical illustrations were by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schulz, Loewe, Glinka, Mendelssohn, and Schubert. If the lecturer had not been limited by the time of an evening’s entertainment he could have brought forward a thousand excellent songs which pleased the musical world before the advent of Schumann. And is Glinka the Russian of more importance than the song writers of Italy and France and England?
17Berlioz’ Un-Fantastic Symphony
19A very fine performance of the Fantastic Symphony of Berlioz by the Straram Orchestra called to mind the dislike which Berlioz always expressed for the music of Handel, which appears on Parisian programs at least ten times as often as the music of Berlioz. The symphony moreover was not particularly fantastic when compared with the works of Ravel, Casella, and de Falla which completed the program. Like Corelli’s La Folia for violin, it has long ceased to astonish and shock. And is its musical value very great?
21Another Straram program consisted of Haydn, Rameau, Delannoy, Berg, and Roussel. The preceding program had Mozart’s E flat symphony, Liszt’s Les Préludes, two short pieces by Milhaud, the well known Debussy prelude to a Faun’s Afternoon, and a Scythian suite by Prokofieff. Conductor Straram probably produces more novelties than any other Parisian conductor during the same length of season.
23Landowska’s Exquisite Playing
25Eight pianists claim attention in the limited space of this letter. Beginning with the ladies, I must mention the exquisite work of Wanda Landowska in a Handel concerto for harpsichord and orchestra and in a Mozart concerto for piano and orchestra, both of which appeared on the program of the Poulet Orchestra on February 5.
27Earlier in the week the Austrian pianist, Helene Lampel, who now makes Paris her home, played a very exacting program of Bach, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, and Liszt, in the Salle des Agriculteurs. Her technical powers are remarkably good and she plays with great authority. The audience might have been larger if the recital had not coincided with Brailowsky’s recital at the Opéra.
29And Brailowsky’s
31He has long been a favorite here in Paris, where he practically began his career, playing at first to almost empty halls. At his recent recital however the huge opera house was packed full from ground floor to ceiling. He was compelled to repeat certain Chopin favorites immediately, as well as play encores during the course of the recital. And of course the extra numbers at the end were many. I left the building at twenty minutes past midnight which is late even for a Paris recital or operatic performance. Alexandre Brailowsky, like Alexander the Great, has no more worlds to conquer—at least in Paris.
33Mark Hambourg gave two recitals in the large Pleyel Hall which was well filled on both occasions. Applause was great and extra numbers were many. He certainly has no technical limitations, but there are many auditors who evidently do not agree with his interpretation of familiar works. He has a talent for eccentricity.
35A Superb Liszt Rhapsody
37Claudio Arrau, the South American pianist who lives in Berlin, gave a recital in the Chopin Hall to a limited audience. I was delighted with this young artist’s easy technic. He gave a superb performance of Liszt’s Spanish rhapsody, and I would gladly have heard him play some Spanish works—Albeniz for instance—instead of the A flat sonata of Beethoven’s last period. He knows the Spanish temperament.
39Levitzki’s fame had preceded him to Paris. Consequently his first appearance here was a veritable triumph. The Agriculteurs Hall was crowded to its utmost capacity and the pianist was greeted with cheers and noises of welcome for a minute or more before he began to play. Of course another recital was immediately announced. He was signing innumerable programs surrounded by bevy of happy girls when I left the artists’ room long after the recital.
41Marcian Thalberg proved himself to be a serious, scholarly and admirable artist when he gave his piano recital in the same old Erard Hall where another Thalberg of pianistic fame astonished the musical world of Paris some eighty years ago. Marcian Thalberg was warmly applauded for his forceful reading of Schumann’s G minor sonata, op. 11. I found his Chopin more solid than elegant, however. The recital was emphatically a success. A second concert is announced.
43A New Italian Pianist
45A young Italian pianist, who teaches at the conservatory of Parma, came up to Paris last week almost unannounced and gave a recital at the Cercle International de Musique in conjunction with the American soprano, Marion McAfee, whose beautiful voice and refined art have already been mentioned in these columns. The pianist showed himself a master of his instrument, possessing power and delicacy, a good tone, and neat execution. The compositions he played were all Italian, beginning with the Scarlatti sonatas and ending with the latest concert paraphrases. He should be heard in a larger hall when he next appears in Paris.
47Kathleen Phillips was heard to great advantage in the Erard Hall, where she gave a song recital to an appreciative audience. There were other concerts on the same evening and I was able to hear her sing only some charming old English songs in good taste and correct style. I am willing to believe the report that her other songs were equally well sung. Her voice is pleasing and well under control.
49Elizabeth Schumann drew as large an audience as the Gaveau Hall could hold when she sang an entire program of German songs there a few days ago. All the vocalists and their teachers appear to have been present to hear this authoritative artist interpret the German classics. It is strange that her quiet manner and by no means powerful voice did not become monotonous. Her art was able to hold her hearers enchanted to the end.
51Alice Tully, a young dramatic soprano from New York, who has been working here in Paris during the past three years, gave her second recital in the Gaveau Hall late in January. She was altogether admirable in the broad and tragic airs from Gluck’s dramatic operas. And this American girl has conquered the difficulties of French diction. Her singing of Debussy and other French composers was an agreeable surprise to her Parisian friends. Her powerful, rich and musical voice will carry her very far on the way to fame and fortune if she continues as she has started.
53George Garner, a tenor who was born in Jamaica and musically trained in Chicago, gave a recital which showed off the qualities of his voice and his manner of interpreting Italian, German, English, and negro dialect songs. I see no reason why this singer should not become one of the most popular among the colored artists of the day. His manner is pleasing and his voice has a mellow charm which lends itself readily to sentiment.
55Albert Jarosy’s violin recital in the Chopin Hall was not supported by the public to as great an extent as the masterly playing of the recitalist warranted. He played a concerto by Viotti, a concerto by Mozart, and Bruch’s concerto in G minor, and all with piano accompaniment. The program was a little too heavy to attract the masses, but the violinists and their pupils should have heard this master of style interpret the classics.
57A Musical Family
59At last I have heard something new in the concert world. I refer to the Misses Pallemarts, to wit, Angélique, Mercédès, and Marta, three pianists with the same family name, who gave a joint recital of piano music, each one contributing a concerto, or a rhapsody, or a fantasy, at an orchestral concert in the Erard Hall, conducted by a man whose name was also Pallemarts. The piano appears to be a popular instrument in the Pallemarts family. Conservatories of music which are engaged in the mass production of pianists might advantageously copy the Pallemarts plan and bring out their young players in groups as the supply of recital halls does not keep pace with the accumulation of pianists.
61When I heard the solemn and austere tones of Bach’s B minor Mass in the Pleyel Hall on the last Saturday of January, conducted by Philippe Gaubert with his orchestra from the Conservatoire, I was carried in imagination to the beautiful ivy covered church in Bethlehem among the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania where my esteemed friend and great Bach enthusiast, Dr. Wolle, directed his faithful choristers through the mazes of this score. And I felt that although the Parisian performance was smoother and more exact perhaps, there was something in the rural surroundings and the earnestness of the Bethlehem performance which more than made up for the colder perfection of the French performance.
63Clarence Lucas.
65London Hears Latest Schönberg—and Earliest
67Composer Earns Ovation After Performance of Gurrelieder—His Third String Quartet, Also Novelties by Berg, Janacek, Malipiero, Heard—Artur Schnabel Popularizing Schubert’s Sonatas—Brailowsky, Friedman and Petri Play.
69London.—We have been getting acquainted with Arnold Schönberg, both with his genius and in the flesh. The great man came here to conduct his monumental Gurrelieder, and this gave commentators an opportunity to remark that he didn’t look at all like a composer of ultra-modern music (which raises the question as to how a composer of modern music should look), and the perspicacious critics to discover that the music was Wagnerian. As if anything written twenty-six years ago was anything else!
71But, before the shock of hearing a modern lion roar like a dove was over, we were given a dose of Schönberg, Style 1927, namely the third string quartet. To make the picture complete, moreover, the pendulum swing back to the Schönberg of the middle period; for the Vienna String Quartet, with Mme. Ruzena Herlinger, of Vienna, gave the patrons of the Gerald Cooper concerts a superb performance of the second (F sharp minor) string quartet, with soprano voice.
73The Gurrelieder have been discussed in these columns, not once, but several times. It is a composition which requires such a terrific apparatus for its performance—orchestra of 150, several choruses, soloists and speaker (not forgetting the chains)—that it is no wonder if it was not performed outside of Germany until the composer had become an international celebrity. But it is certainly adding insult to injury, then, to reproach the composer for not having composed, in 1901, a work that fails to explode like a bomb of 1927. The essential point to investigate is, obviously, not the “modernity” or “unmodernity” with which its ideas are presented, but the originality or unoriginality of the ideas themselves.
75Had the composer employed, in a sort of clairvoyant trance, the idiom of the Schönberg of 1927, we might be led to believe that the musical thought so expressed is original even today. Since, however, he employed the coin-current of twenty-six years ago, even the lesser minds are enabled to perceive not only that the subject matter is not new today but that it wasn’t new in 1901. That is the danger of composers allowing their innocent early works to be paraded before people who have been attracted by the cry of “Wolf!” Or, inversely, of young composers writing works which in the nature of things cannot hope for performance until after they have reached their maturity. Such post facto self-revelations are sometimes compromising in the extreme.
77A Popular Success
79What happened to Schönberg in London was, in fact, the most compromising thing that could happen to an ultra-modern heavy-weight, namely a popular success. At the end of the Gurrelieder he was given an ovation such as few musicians within memory have received in London. What is worse still, the ovation came at the end of a performance which was, to use a polite word, inadequate. The tenor was almost completely drowned in the orchestral tidal wave, the soprano gave forth nothing but gobs of beautiful tone, and both orchestra and chorus were so near the rocks that a shipwreck seemed to be imminent several times. In the last and by far the most imaginative part of the work the reader was usually either ahead of the music or lagging behind it; but by grace of goodness and the cleverness of Schönberg’s conducting they finally landed together. So the composer, besides having to endure the popular approval of his work was put into the position of having to sponsor a performance which, with only six rehearsals, was perhaps as good as one ought to expect, but no better. To say that London heard the Gurrelieder is, in any case, euphemistic.
81The Real Schönberg
83From the Gurrelieder to the third string quartet is a
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