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Musical Courier 1928-06-21: Vol 96 Iss 25, 1928
62 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1KOUSSEVITZKY AND THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
3ONE winter's evening, twenty-seven years ago, a handsome, dapper, romantic looking young Russian walked onto the stage of the venerable Berlin Singakademie, lugging a ponderous double bass and made his initial bow before a critical audience in what was then the world's musical metropolis. A hush of expectancy followed his tuning of the unwieldy instrument, for all present realized that this was no ordinary Berlin debut, but a unique occasion, for even in that concert ridden city, recitals on the double bass had not been heard since the days of Bottesini.
5And the interest was all the keener because this aristocratic looking young man from Moscow, who was to make so bold as to attempt to entertain the most blase musical public of the world by playing solos on the Leviathan of stringed instruments, did not play a small-sized three string bass tuned to fifths, as did Bottesini, but he was to give rein to his virtuosity on a full size orchestra bass tuned to fourths in the regulation way. No one had attempted to win virtuoso laurels on the full size bass since Dragonetti, 100 years before.
7This youthful Russian's name was Serge Koussevitzky and he came, played and conquered. The principal number on his program was his own concerto for his chosen instrument, a well conceived and admirably written work that revealed his superior musicianship and exploited to the full the technical and tonal possibilities of the double bass. The newcomer created a furor with his wonderful playing. The audience was astounded at the dulcet sounds he drew from his mellow-throated stringed Titan. There was naught of the harsh, guttural grumblings one expected to issue from those huge strings, but a warm, luscious, soulful, singing tone—a cantabile that touched the heart, and a fleetness, a nimbleness, a certainty of execution—in short a virtuosity like that of Pablo Casals on the cello. The critics went into raptures over the wonder of it all, and Koussevitzky soon became a European celebrity. On October 23, next season, New York will hear him perform on the double bass and will then know how he plays.
9I was among those present on that memorable occasion more than a quarter of a century ago, and during the next five years I frequently heard Koussevitzky, for he concertized extensively as a double bass virtuoso. I once journeyed from Berlin to Leipzig to hear him as soloist with the world famous Gewandhaus Orchestra under the baton of Arthur Nikisch. At that concert Koussevitzky played his own transcriptions of Mozart's concerto for bassoon and of Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei for cello. His success in Leipzig was no less great than it had been in the Prussian capital. In Russia he gave joint recitals with Feodor Chaliapin that everywhere drew capacity audiences.
11I recall with particular pleasure Koussevitzky's numerous concerts in Berlin, given with the assistance of Henri Casadesus, the wonderful performer on the viola d'amour. The playing of beautiful old seventeenth and eighteenth century duos for viola d'amour and double bass, by those two unique artists, are among the most treasured of my many musical memories, covering a period of more than forty years.
13HIS ROMANTIC MARRIAGE
15Meanwhile a beautiful web of romance had been woven into the young musician's life. He fell in love with Natalie Constantinowa Ouschkoff, a charming and cultured, as well as a very wealthy young Russian girl, and after a courtship of short duration they were married. That was in 1905. The couple settled in Berlin after their honeymoon and there they maintained a beautiful home and entertained lavishly. It was there that I first met the great Chaliapin, and also Sobinoff, the distinguished Russian tenor. And it was there that I first heard the exquisite chamber music performances of the Parisian Societe des Instruments Anciens, and it was there also that I heard Koussevitzky and Jacques Thibaud play Bottesini's famous duo for violin and double bass with Fritz Kreisler at the piano.
17Koussevitzky had always had a pronounced flair for conducting, and with the princely income now at his disposal he was free to turn his attention to this branch of musical activity. He began to practise with an orchestra, recruited from among the pupils at the Berlin High School of Music. I distinctly recall his first attempts as a conductor. The young Russian profited immensely from the example of Arthur Nikisch, who was then at the zenith of his powers as leader of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In my mind's eye I still see Koussevitzky seated beside his wife in his box in the great hall of the Philharmonic at the Nikisch concerts, marking the scores which he always had with him, and watching intently every gesture of the great Hungarian conductor. He also had many opportunities during those years in Berlin to hear other famous orchestra leaders.
19HIS DEBUT AS A CONDUCTOR
21Koussevitzky's own public debut as a conductor was made in the German capital with the Philharmonic Orchestra in 1906, and his success was so gratifying that he made frequent appearances with the same organization, giving for several years annual series of "Russian Concerts" with all-Russian programs, thus introducing many new and interesting works to Germany. Later he returned to Moscow, where he established a home of such proportions that thirteen servants were required to maintain it. It was once my privilege to be entertained for two weeks by Mr. and Mme. Koussevitzky in that home. In Moscow, Koussevitzky founded his own private orchestra of seventy-three musicians, recruited from among the best players available in Europe, and he directed this orchestra for a period of five years at a personal expense to himself of 200,000 roubles ($100,000). This was the largest and most proficient private orchestra ever kept by a professional musician in all musical history, and it was with this organization, with which the leader was free to rehearse to his heart's content, that Koussevitzky was enabled to develop his own great musical resources and acquire that surpassing skill, as a leader and interpreter, that was later to make him world famous.
23And right here a warm word of recognition is due to Mme. Koussevitzky for her great service to the art of music, by enabling her husband through her lavish expenditure to develop his genius and gain the experience that was later to place him at the head of one of the world's foremost orchestras, the Boston Symphony. Koussevitzky con-
25certized in Russia extensively with this orchestra. His concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg were not only great musical, but also social, events. I travelled with him and his orchestra, as his guest, for a period of four weeks on that memorable tour of 2,000 miles down the Volga in a special steamer. My account of that remarkable voyage appeared in these columns some years ago. I heard Koussevitzky give fifteen concerts in all the principal cities along the Volga. Even at that time he was a very fine leader and he gave promise of developing those transcendental qualities as an interpreter that were later to make him one of the outstanding figures in the musical world.
27After the war came his great successes in London and Paris, which were followed by the Boston engagement. It is unquestionably due to Koussevitzky's genius, his boundless enthusiasm and his untiring industry that the Boston Symphony Orchestra has regained its former prestige which was for a time dimmed. When I first heard it, more than forty years ago, it was quite without a peer in this country, but that did not mean as much then as it does now because there was very little competition. Today we have in America many fine orchestras, and four of them are organizations of the first rank—the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia and the Chicago orchestras. Opinions vary as to which is the greatest of these, but for me (and I write from a New York viewpoint) the Boston Symphony, under Koussevitzky, leads for all round technical perfection, tonal purity and beauty, resonance, instrumental balance and general excellence of ensemble.
29WHAT HE HAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH THE BOSTON SYMPHONY
31What a wealth of tonal color does Koussevitzky draw from this grand body of musicians! What richness and sonority in the strings! I have always observed that a conductor who plays a stringed instrument himself gets more out of the strings than a leader who has never manipulated a bow. But the distinguished Russian also blends the strings with the woodwind and brass into a colorful and harmonious whole. In one respect he is quite unique among contemporaneous conductors, and that is in his unceasing search for novelties. He is a path-finder, a pioneer in this, and he has introduced more new unknown orchestral works to the American public than any other conductor ever did. To be sure they were not all chef d'oeuvres, but this is not an age of masterpieces of musical composition. Koussevitzky at least gives deserving young composers a hearing and he enables the public to keep in touch with the trend of the times. Furthermore, he calls the attention of other conductors to meritorious new compositions by the public success he achieves with them. Toscanini told me, when I complimented him upon his magnificent performance of Honegger's Pacific No. 231, at a Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall last January, that he had never heard of the work until he read of Koussevitzky's rousing success with it in Paris. Now it is one of the great Italian's standard repertory numbers.
33Koussevitzky's recent performance of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, at Carnegie Hall, created a commotion with the press and public such as one seldom witnesses in New York. Although opinions differed as to the merits of the composition, all agreed that the Russian gave a wonderful rendition of it. Koussevitzky is a real live wire when he stands in front of an orchestra. He feels every note of the work in hand with an emotional intensity that electrifies the audience. And he manifests this same lofty devotion to every composition he performs, be it concerto grosso by Handel, a symphony by Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms, or an ultra-modern work. And who was not deeply moved by his recent New York reading of Tchaikowsky's Pathetic Symphony? This old war horse of so many orchestra leaders took on a new meaning because of the straight-forward simplicity of the reading that Koussevitzky gave it, and, while listening to it, it was forced upon me as perhaps never before what a great work it is, despite its hysterical sobs and its unblushing sentimentalities. So long as we have such immortal renditions of it, as Koussevitzky gave, there is no danger of Tchaikowsky's sixth symphony disappearing from our programs. I heard it in Berlin nearly thirty-four years ago, only a few months after Tchaikowsky's death, and I have since heard it by many great conductors, but never have I heard a more moving performance of it than Koussevitzky gave in New York on March 9.
35A CONSTRUCTIVE POLICY
37The homogeneousness and uniform high standard of proficiency, in all styles of composition, maintained by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky, are the strongest possible arguments in favor of the one conductor policy. It is a constructive policy, for in retaining so great a musician and leader as a permanent conductor, the orchestra has acquired a finesse, a sensitiveness, a response to the slightest intention of the leader that one misses in the other great orchestras. Our two great New York orchestras, the Philharmonic and the Symphony, played this season under no less than eleven conductors; the Philharmonic under four—Mengelberg, Molinari, Beecham and Toscanini,—and the Symphony under seven—Busch, Gabrilowitsch, Damrosch, Ravel, Goossens, Fried and Arbos.
39This season was the culmination point of the New York craze for guest conductors. There can be no question that the pendulum is commencing to swing the other way, for the public is beginning to tire of this system. An orchestra that plays under so many different conductors cannot possibly have the tone quality and the perfection of ensemble that distinguish the Boston Symphony. The guest system makes for heterogeneity instead of for homogeneousness. Furthermore, the expense of such a policy is prohibitory and the amalgamation of the Philharmonic and the Symphony is the natural outcome of this system. On the other hand the way the elite of New York flock to the Boston Symphony concerts shows what a hold on the public the famous organization has gained under the leadership of Koussevitzky.
41Music an Expression of the Age
43By Cara Verson
45Since music of the 17th and 18th centuries was influenced by the formal and stately mode of life and thought of that period, and the music of the 19th century by its romanticism, is it unreasonable to say that the music of today is also an expression of the present age?
47The chief characteristic of the classic period was form—the fugue so perfectly developed by Bach and the stateliness of the sonata by Beethoven.
49The romanticists placed melody before form and began to break away from the more rigid sonata form, and when this idiom was used at all, it was made far more elastic and unconventional. Liszt evolved the symphonic poem for the orchestra—a freer form, than had previously been used. The loosely woven, though charming rhapsodies for the piano, and John Field invented the nocturne form—all less restricted idioms than those of the classicalists. Chopin, Schumann and other romantic composers wrote some compositions still freer in form, making melody of primary importance and using more unusual harmonies, more chromatics and modulating to less closely related keys. All the composers of this period were inspired greatly by the painting and literature of their era, all extremely romantic—again music is influenced by the trend of the time.
51Since this is the case, is it so startling, so strange that the music of today should be so much more complicated than that of either of the preceding periods?
53As form was the outstanding characteristic of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries and melody that of the later 19th century, so color and rhythm predominate in the music of today. Color created by means of the duodecuple scale—by consecutive and parallel fifth, seventh, ninth, by whole tone, Oriental, chromatic and other old scales, pentatonic and other modes, by parallel instead of horizontal counterpoint with harmony piled on top of harmony, whole compositions evolved from a chord in fourths or by overtones.
55The sonata form of today has been expanded in some cases until it is almost a symphonic poem, in other cases, so changed (often shortened) that it is a free fantasy and bears little resemblance to that of the classic period.
57Since the present is an age of unrest, far less calm and quiet than the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, let us see what influence this has had on music in the modern idiom. In this age of hurry we do not have time for all the charming formalities indulged in by our grandfathers, therefore, this probably has helped to produce the tendency for short melodies and themes. There seems not to be time for a theme to be "gut ausgearbeitet" as even in Brahms' day. The restlessness is perhaps reflected in the many themes used, the frequent changes of rhythm. Perhaps the complexity of texture, the perpendicular counterpoint of some modern compositions is an expression of the complexity of present day life.
59Now let us consider the factor of rhythm as the other outstanding characteristic of present day music—and an important characteristic it is. What marvelous use Stravinsky has made of everchanging and often compound rhythms in the Sacre de Printemps. Again the striving of primitive man is revealed, but this time in the effort to attain higher intelligence, in the Vers la Flamme, of Scriabin. The Bartok compositions have many changes of rhythm, many of them unusual rhythms, and are often a picture of peasant life. In each of these cases, rhythm has
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