MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 180, 20 October 1927, Page 16

MUSIC

(By

F.1.R.)

Madame Calve, the former grand opera prima donna, is entering vaudeville in America this month. Mr. E. J, Gravestock, who has brought so many fine artists to the Dominion, leaves for America by the Aorangi next month to finalise arrangements for the visit of several big musical attractions to the Dominion next year. Along with the London String Quartette ancl a number of operatic stars Madame Frances Alda, the Metropolitan opera soprano, has been engaged for the .'Elwyn Artists Series in New York under the management of the Wolfsohn Musical Bureau. * * * Gwen Selva (Gwendolyn Spanswick), who toured New Zealand a few years ago, gave a song recital in the King’s Hall, Sydney, on Tuesday, when a unique programme including old French and modern Spanish songs was presented. This was Miss Selva’s first recital since her return from Europe.

Associated with Joseph Hislop, the famous British tenor, who is shortly to tour New Zealand under the J. and N. Tait management, is Leila Doubleday, the wife of Professor Max Pirani, who is now in Australia as examiner for the Royal Academy of Music, London. London critics referred most enthusiastically to the playing of the brilliant young Australian violinist. < 'harles Hamburg, Mark’s brother, is a member of the .Pirani trio, with which Miss Doubleday has been associated in London. Albert Sciarretti, the sole pianist of the party, is noted in America, Europe and England.

“With gestures indicative of a Presbyterian elder taking round the plate, •Joseph Hislop sang Beethoven’s ‘Adelaide’ to a fully taken-up if not oversubscribed auditorium on Saturday night,” states the “Bulletin.” “Hislop’s singing is not of the Italian school. It lacks the histrionic throb. Without being at all matter-of-fact, it has a decent Scotch reserve about it. Its owner is the master, not the slave, of his emotions. He is also the same sort of dramatic artist. He examines everything on both sides, bites it to make sure it is genuine, and spends it with caution. In other words, he doesn’t overdo things. His voice,” said the critic, “is a vagrant tenor, whose full volume is of good loud-speaker strength and whose pianissimos are not more than .0001 p.c. above silence.”

The young Carterton singer. Miss Thelma Petersen, continues to justify the interest taken in her by Wairarapa people, encouraged her in the early stages of her career. She recently reappeared on the concert platform in London, and in criticising her performance, the “Daily Telegraph’’ sa.d: “She possessed more of the instincts of a good singer, and the intelligence withal that enabled her to sense rightly the mood and meaning of a song; and, for the most part, at this recital, she achieved her end by simple means and without this or that point. Rarely did the singer fail to charm by the sheer beauty and warmth of her mezzo-soprano voice, the appeal of which, enforced by a generally sympathetic style, is all the stronger by reason of its freedom from the unsteadiness that spoils the effect of so many good voices nowadays.” “The Times” writes of Miss Petersen’s “true mezzo-soprano voice both in range and quality,” and gives equal praise to her charm.