THE GUINEA CONCERT

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 82

THE GUINEA CONCERT

Bt Marco.

Sweetest the strain when in the song The singer has been lost. — E S Phelps. I would more frequently invite Julia to expensive pleasures, but she has an uncomfortable habit of accepting when it would 1 be much more graceful on her part to deprecate the extravagance and leave me magnanimous in possession of my restricted means. Still, however deeply it jags my accumulative faculty, for decency sake I must risk an occasional liberal in\ itation. When the time came, it was a compromise, and we had marked off two half-guinea seats on the plan. Juiia — to do her credit — had entered a remonstrance that the guinea might provide a very decent fialad bowl to add to the picture and the table centre already in hand towards our prospective furnishing. But — being al- i ready practically committed — I brushed the objection aside in the millionaire spirit, borrowed the guinea, and after spending half the morning at the tail end of the queue under police surveillance, bore away the precious pasteboards. j The greatest contralto of the present time! It sounded impressive. No room here, surely, for a judge versus tutor controversy as to whether she was a true contralto or a mezzo-sopra.no. Why do folk, especially in a province which is evidently to be eternally dubbed Scotch, patronise so freely the guinea entertainment The internal reason, if available — which in most cases it is not likely to be— would furnish food for the philosopher. Occasionally it leaks out. Brown has not missed one of the visiting musical artists for 10 years, and is "not going to miss" Clara Butt. ' I've got a oouple of tickets, not that I'm desperately anxious to hear her, but Gi-een is so infernally stingj* — he's sure to be listening amongst the crowd in the back street — that I got them to *hame him "—" — thus Jones. " I should like to go, because I hear she's a good Christian !" suggested tho lamentable spiritual condition of the stage generally. The singing teacher carefully selected a seat as an investment, expecting the commercial value of the gTiinea in the " tips " to be picked up. The precarious business man reckoned upon his appearance in a prominent seat suggesting a buoyancy of finances which might renew the confidence of certain doubting client*. Then there is the privilege it affords of confidently asking your friends if they heard Clara Butt, with the inevitable opportunity of impressing them with the fact that you, "of course,"' were there. I have already taken advantage of several openings of the kind, and there is a compensating- pleasure to the "canny," after the painful exercise of disgorging, in the lofty grandeur with which, in an off-hand manner, he can reply : " Oh. yes ; I had a couple of eeats." There is the press critic, whose first concern is "copy," and who, though finite, is obliged to adopt the omniscient style and leave no room for the in- j ference that he may not be au fait with German, Italian, French, Greek, Maori, Yiddish ; that a finished knowledge of every instrument under Heaven may not be portion of hi 6 equipment, and that absolute authority as to what is music and what is merely " a concession to the bourgeois " may not be one of his credentials. Lastly, there are doubtless some who enjoy music ' for itself, who are content to have that extra sense ravished without fear of contamination from false ideale, uncultured " popular " taste. j When we arrived (after twopennorth of electric tram), a few minutes before 8, | there were but few vacant seats. It was j obvious we were in for a melting time of it. Two ample men occupied seat<> adjoining ours (when we got in finally I dis- ] covered that they overflowed a portion of mine), and looked apprehensively for the coming of the tenants. They seemed • positively relieved when two persons of very moderate physique were ushered in. Before us the stage was already interesting. There was the old man with a large stick; the young ladj' with the old-fashioned three-quarter jacket, which she persisted ir_ wearing throughout the oppressive heat l

of the evening; the quaint HtTle whitehaired male figure which bobbed up from the back seat and remained in an attitude of absorbed delight \vhene\er anj thing specially pleased him ; and there was the pretry girl in the front whose half-crown position under the border lights probably arrested the eye more pleasantly than did the few shrubs intended as decorations. The closeness of our chairs speaks uncomfortably of economy, and we wonder if it be possible that the immoderately-fleshed lady and her broad husband in the row behind are accommodated on only a chair apiece. We have the usual lady of publio conversation behind us, and are glad. Her smug, self-satisfied utterances are always so much more amusing than she ever imagines. " Everyone really ought to go 'to hear these artist 6, you know ; it is an | opportunity for education which everyone should avail of." We commiserate the . poor dustman and the wharf labourer, who ' are so benighted as to voluntarily miss the , opportunity. In the role of guide book she is useful, and we are soon familiar with , the pedigree of many of the new arrivals, and 1 in possession of varied interesting and intimate details anent their affairs. But to our programmes. Whatever the I merit of the other artists, this ie a Clara Butt concert. She is the sun, and the rest are the planets, and upon her lustre must the success of the entertainment depend. Taken apart from Clara Butt, her colleagues might make ever so excellent a programme, but linked with " the greatest contralto of the present time," it must be that in proportion as she pleases or displeases will the concert be considered I successful. Julia and I have our own modest ideas of what constitutes correct, tasteful, and artistic singing, and are pre- , pared to worship or condemn according to our little standard. We do not complain if others have different sthndards and joidge differently; we only claim the right to our own. But the programme. We have to search to the second la6t item on i the first half of the programme for thih <: Clara Butt " concert before we find the artiste's name for one song. Strange, but perhaps more in the next part. Half -way through the second haJf there is another single number, and at the end a duet in which she takes part. Shades of Dolores ! Two songs and a bit ! And Dolores has not grudged six programme ■ numbers and (in response to unfeeJing demands) twice that many encore solos. I begin to weigh afresh that guinea and balance the salad bowl against the programme. However^ perhaps she appears in more liberal aspect as the concert proi ceeds. Meanwhile, from the programme, ' I it might be judged to be a Kennerley Rumford concert, with Madame Clara Butt a« an adjunct, for his name appears against five solos and a duet. Your solo instrumentalist never grudges you quantity. His message is less obvious than that of the vocalist, and ac a consequence your violinist or your pianist repeats liis theme over and over again, in wondrous variety, in order that it may become seared upon the tablets of the soul. Some souls there are which do not seem to appreciate the searing process, for it could not but be noted that after six or seven minutes of the instrumentalist, numbers amongst the audience had important I communications to make to their neighbours — communications the urgency of j which took precedence over the continued message of the soloist. Others, again, were sacrilegious enough to find amusement in the manner in which the pianist, in an excess of fervour, threw his hands high I over his head. A "salvo of applause," , , as they say in the newspaper advertiseI ments, greeted the appearance of Mr Ken- j j nerley Rumford — a fine military figure and ' a commanding presence. His first number I was " Wie bist dv, meine konigin," above ] the Englsh rendering of which on the pro- t gramme was the heading " English vereion," which did not seem a good transj lation. Producing our little standard at the conclusion of the evening, we found him to be an enjoyable vocalist, with a bar Hone voice of good quality but moderate proportions, effective in dramatic expressiveness, with notably distinct enunciation, with a resonant, rolling " r," but a tendency to overdo the tears, and with ;

the disagreeable fault of audible breathing. \ His fame is evidently less that of a first- j grade world artist than that of being the jiwband of Clara Butt.- We were early captivated by the ease and grace of the accompanist, Mr Arthur Godfrey, and regarded those flexible, mobile hands and their work as one of the delights of the concert. There was a buzz of anticipation, a pause broken only by the voice of the public conversationist behind : " >»ow, tv ait-she's got an awful voice!" We guessed what she meant, so accustomed do we become to the grossly absurd misube of terms in our " awfully jolly," " fearfully warm," " beastly cold," etc. Tho door opened, black hair reaching nigh to the lintel wae momentarily visible over . the screen, and the next instant a tall, gracious figure in whole pink-crushed strawberry, Julia corrects— smilingly acknowledged the prolonged, unrestrained greeting of an audience which had possessed it« soul in patience quite long enough. There is something majestic about a tall, full-figured woman, flushed with mature vigour. But the hair-it is disappointing. Bunched out wide at each side from a parting in the centre, with the coiffure on the neck, it suggests a damsel in her teens when otherwise it might be as a coronet upon a woman sustaining tho dignity of motherhood. A nose slightly retroiu.se is never associated with classic features, but the smiling face may be ever beautiful, and Madame Clara Butt has a gracious personality. A few caressing movements of those expressive hands of Godfrey's, and she has launched forth upon the fervid aria "Divinites dv styx," alias " English version " (vide the programme). The public conversationist was right in sense, if not in terms; tho voice is phenomenal, noble, in its quality and power. It is deep, rich, organ-toned, flute-like in its upper register, rich in wondrous possibilities. The scale bearing the guinea began to rise. The applause was thunderous, and Madame, yielding to pressure, reappeared, and to the discomfiture of the two or three preservers of the correct musical ideal, but to the obvious delight of her audience, sang in her mother, tongue "Kathleen Mavourneen." Many worthy folk are possessed of the idea that intelligible words are essential to the true expression of song. Quite a fallacy. In fact, to sing in the mother tongue to a British audience is " popular,"' and .to be " popular " is, we are assured, degrading and reprehensible. Far better evidently that a singer should endeavour to make himself intelligible in doubtful French, German, or Italian, which will be followed stumblingly by mayhap a dozen of his hearers, than that he should " prostitute his powers " by singing in his native tongue to the plebeian crowd. After a liberal Tespite, Madame appeared once more, in English again— alack for the preservers ! — but quite respectable English, Tennyson's, indeed. We began to feel that in the great massive breadth of her wonderful voice organ was her chiofest delight, and that in dramatic, robust themes was she likely to achieve her best successes. In our own small way we would have preferred a little more of that delicate, expressive singing of which the voice was perhaps equally capable. The fusillade of applause which followed, accentuated by the undisguised shouting of a well-known commercial gentleman near, must have induced copious perspiration, but it had the desired effect, and the introductory bars to " The lost chord " left us all breathless with expectancy. What ravishing effects might not be anticipated when such a voice is applied to the interpretation of that gem of song, which is destined to outlive its detractors. Of the potentialities of that voice we were still to learn something. The opening lines were spoken easily, with perhaps less colour ■than we could have wished and with occasional doubtful phrasing. Madame was reserving herself for the triumphant ' refrain, and with the opening out of the prospect of hearing that "grand amen" again in Heaven, the singer abandoned all restraint, and that voice of priceless value swelled out in a passion of eong that silenced piano and organ as it vibrated to the farthermost parts of the house and, incidentally, gladdened the hearts of the frugally disposed listening in i the back street. The applause was terrific; the ample lady in the row behind clapped until I felt quite hot; the commercial man shouted louder than before ; the little white-haired male figure at the ', back of the stage seats was alarmingly agitated. Julia and I were disappointed. The interpretation wae not according to our measuring rod: we had hoped for a little more light and shade and "soul." We looked sadly at each other. Julia, lam certain, was thinking of the salad bowl. But we were in a hopeless minority. Poseibly our humble standard requires revising. — A teaspoonful of salt in the reservoir of a paraffin lamp will be found to improve the light. " I have much pleasure," sav6 Mr N". M'Curdy, Dipton, N.Z., " in recommending Chamberlain's Tablets for all disorders of the digestive organs. I can truthfully say that I have never derived so much satisfaction from any medicine as I have from Chamberlain's Tablets. They are mild and gentle in their action, and leave no bad after-effeot, euch as constipation, and in this respect are superior to pills. I make a point of recommending them to my friends, and all who have used them ai 1 * loud in their praise." For sale evorywher3.