MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 316, 29 March 1928, Page 16

MUSIC

(By

F.1.R.)

Laszio Schwartz, the Hungarian violinist, who was here some years ago, will return to New Zealand this year, after a tour abroad. He will be assisted by Miss Dawn Assheton, soprano, and Miss Kathleen Strathearn, a Canadian pianist. * * * The new pipe organ in the Passau Cathedral, the largest in the world, will be dedicated on April 27 by the bishop of Passau. Concerts will be given, presenting the greatest organ music from ancient times down to the present day. The organ has 17,000 pipes and five manuals.

A new musical typewriter may soon be added to the list of modern mechanical devices, an invention of Katharine Gorin, composer-pianist. Her invention will enable composers to type their scores instead of writing them laboriously by hand, as they have been forced to do for hundreds of years. The only typewriter of the kind that has previously been invented is a German product, said to be more complicated.

The band of the Coldstream Guards, London, has recorded for TI.M.V. two of the stirring marches written by Mr. R. A. Horne, of the Bristol Piano Company, Christchurch. Both the “B.B.” and the “East and West” marches, often heard in Christchurch picture theatres, are recorded with full and realistic tone. Both have all the qualities of a. good march—volume, tune and rhythm—and of their class it would be hard to find better.

London found Jan Kubelik’s playing a trifle chilly this year. The great violinist appeared at the Albert Hall last month for the first time in several years. Though once “a fiery and exciting player,” now his playing “seemed small and a trifle chilly.” But as a technician, he is still in the front rank. The recital saw the first performance of his own “Concerto in B Flat,” a rather monotonous and uninteresting work.

Under the conductorship of Mr. W. E. Webb, the Aeolian Orchestra is making steady progress in its preparation for the forthcoming season. The orchestra, which is now entering into its seventh season, has done remarkably well during the short period of its existence, and judging by the success already attained, can be relied upon to acquit itself creditably during the forthcoming season.

There will never be another waltz like “The Blue Danube,” according to Johann Strauss, the conductor, and nephew of the waltz composer, who arrived in London last month from Vienna. “The waltz will come back,” he said, “if only because it is the soul of the dance. There are signs of it already. Jazz is as ephemeral as a woman’s fashion; it will change just as surely as the style of a woman’s clothes. Not that I want it to. It expresses so well the mood of restlessness that hangs over the world to-day. In Vienna, the waltz is again competing with jazz—and winning the fight!”

Thomas Hardy’s death recalls the almost forgotten opera “Tess,” founded on the novel with music by Baron Frederic d’Erlanger. The work was produced at Covent Garden in 1909, with Emmy Destinn as Tess, Zenatello as Angel Clare, and Giliber at Jack Derbyfield. Hardy’s delight at seeing so much of his story unfold itself as was used was £ pleasure to witness. He never showed the slightest resentment against the changes that the opera book necessitated in his romance. Moreover, Debussy was in England for the same season, superintending the re-hear-sals for the production of his “Pelleas et Melisande,” and the two great men became fast friends in the gloom of Covent Garden at rehearsal time.

Flonzaley Quartet Will Disband

After ranging the world for 25 years, jthe Flonzaley String Quartet, the finest Of its kind in existence, will disband at the end of this year. The quartet was organised by E. J. de Coppet in 1903, taking its name from his villa in Switzerland. Under the management of Mr Loudon Charlton, it has toured England, the United Slates, and Europe annually since 1905. On M. de Coppet’s death in 1916, his son continued to sponsor its tours. Three of its members have played together from the start: Adolfo” Betti, first violin; Alfred Pochon, second violin; and Ivan d’Archambeau, violoncello. Ugo Ara, violist, left the quartet in 1917 for military service in Italv, his place being filled by Louis Baillv, who remained until the end of 1924. Finally, Nicholas Moldavan joined as violist in 1925.

Although the Flonzaley Quartet is known in New Zealand only from the particularly fine gramophone records it has issued for H.M.V.. here as elsewhere its loss will be distinctly felt.

Concert Customs English Audierices Are Very Trying PAMELA TRAVERS WRITES According to Pamela Travers English highbrow-audiences must be very trying, in some instances possibly more so than the performers. In a letter from London to THE SUN she writes: “Last night I heard the famous Bach choir for the first time. Upon the huge stage of the Queen’s Hall were massed bands of many-coloured women—l mean that each one was differently coloured—and beside this rainbowy bouquet the male singers stood up sheepishly like a bevy of dis-* concerted penguins. An orchestra whose number seemed to run into hordes, clung perilously upon the extreme edge of the platform and clustered about the little railed dais, which looked unpleasantly like a witness box. SOLEMN HIGHBROWS “I had come especially to hear Walt Whitman’s ‘Behold the Sea Itself’ conducted by the composer, Vaughan Williams. In some cases the music and the words ran together friendly in harness, but at others they went careering off to opposite sides of the world. A very solemn and highbrow audience hissed at every dropped programme and muffled whisper and when anybody coughed a windy wave went through the hall as a thousand outraged heads were turned toward the offender. “This intensely earnest air is very trying—but in England all concerts are listened to by the very earnest. Indeed only the most earnest could stand them. I could not help feeling that if the singers were out of sight—say n under the platform, instead of upon it—we should have enjoyed it more. The reds and the greens and the blues of the women and the funeral black of the men absorbed the significance of the music and dazzled the eyes until programmes slipped and fell drunkenly from hand to knee, and from knee to floor to the accompaniment of a 'concerto of hissing serpents.” GRAND OPERA SHOULD ARTISTS SING OR ACT? INTERFERING WITH MUSIC Should opera singers act? Well, most of them don’t, so they’ve settled the question for themselves. When they can act they can so seldom sing, and then they are rather like the girl who wasn’t musical, but had a voice, and who took lessons in piano playing so she could play her own accompaniments. “At the end of a year I could play two accompaniments,” she said proudly, “but I couldn’t sing to them at the same time.” A London musical critic went to America a while ago, and sat through a whole season of the Metropolitan Opera. When he went home he said —loudly and publicly for all the world to hear —“Nothing used to astonish me and amuse me more than the way the singers had of coming as far down as possible to the footlights, and addressing their remarks to the audience, instead of the person they are supposed to be • acting with.” The Americans heard—the storm broke. Wagner An Exception American critics rose up to declare that their public wants acting, but it does not want that acting to interfere with the music; it does not want composers to write only recitative, which makes acting easy. In Wagner, operas, they believe, there might be some excuse for real acting, but in operas of the otlfer sort, where the voice has the time instead of the orchestra, acting spoils the music. One of them says, rather cleverly, “How can the most histrionically endowed of artists really act when his remarks are repeated over and over again through five or six or more minutes of aria, duet or ensemble?” The wrangle is interesting, because we are soon to have a grand opera season in New Zealand. Aida Lombardi, the principal prima donna, after Toti dal Monte, is a woman who is said to be as good an actress as she is a vocalist. But in the Williamson Company she will probablf- be allotted the acting roles, such as Fuccini loved to write his music around, and Toti, who can act just enough to be pleasingly in the picture, will be given the real singing roles. Percy Grainger

AUSTRALIAN COMPOSER TO MARRY SWEDISH POET. MET ON PACIFIC LINER Percy Grainger, the Australian pianist and composer, has announced his marriage, next August, with Ella

Mr. Percy Grainger was born in Melbourne in ISS2. He made his first concert appearance at the age of 10, and subsequently studied abroad, and appeared in nearly every European capital. lie went to America in 1914.

Mr. Grainger has composed more than 60 works for piano, voice, orchestra, etc.