MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 452, 6 September 1928, Page 10

MUSIC

By

Florance Austral. Australian soprano, lias become very popular in America. Recently Edward Moore, of .the “Chicago Tribune,” wrote: “No soprano voice, at least in my time, has ever come within miles of hers.” Mr. C. Roy Spackman, of Napier, was recently appointed organist at Knox Church, Dunedin. He has been music master for the past four years at lona College, and is known to many throughout New Zealand. His father was a former organist of Napier Cathedral.

Under Ernest Dohnanyi, the celebrated Hungarian composer and pianist, the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra recently gave three concerts in the Queen’s Hall, London. Subsidised by the Hungarian Government, this orchestra has completed a most successful tour of the musical centres of Europe.

The young Auckland baritone, Mr. Kenneth Impett, who left some time ago to continue his musical studies in Europe, recently visited London. He has been meeting with considerable success, having sung in Italian opera and having broadcast folk songs, including Maori songs, from all the principal radio stations on the Continent. His visit to London was principally to broadcast from 2LO, but he intends returning there for concert work at the conclusion of his studies at the Milan Conservatorium.

Ossip Gabrilowitch, the internationally famous orchestral conductor, claims that the United States leads the world in the care given to the preparation of a symphony concert. “We worked for four years in Detroit on Bach's ‘Passion,’ ” he said, “before the performance was taken to New York. There is a tendency in large European centres for orchestras and conductors to rest on their laurels. European orchestras have a tradition of 100 years or more; they think it isn’t necessary for the conductor to rehearse more than once or twice with them.”

It is practically certain now that New Zealanders will not hear the Williamson-Melba grand opera company of 1928, states The Sun’s Sydney correspondent. The season will definitely conclude in Sydney. There will not even be a return visit to Melbourne. The majority of artists are very anxious to return to Italy. Toti dal Monte, for instance, has a date at La Scala ahead of her. Claude Kingston, who was in the Dominion last year with Joseph Hislop, the Scottish tenor,, and has controlled the publicity for the present grand opera season, admitted, however, that there w-ere two highly-paid principals whose respective contracts would not finish for some time. “It is just possible that we may do something with them,” he hinted.

F.I.R.

“Was Toti dal Monte prompted at her wedding?” asks the Sydney “Sun.” “Was Toti afraid she wouldn’t remember how to say, ‘I will,’ at her own wedding? Or why did the prompter follower her to the altar? Close upon those cascading yards of chantilly of the bridal train Signor Tornari followed on. We have been told that Toti doesn’t take ‘a prompt/ She always knows her parts so well. Naturally one is nervous making a debut in a new role. Was Toti? Was Signor Tornari there to slip her the word at the exact moment, not half a beat too late? Who knows? Toti won’t say. Anyway, there it is! Up to the Sanctuary itself went that friendly man, to whom all the opera company are as children. To the very end of the bridal service, and after this, grave and potent Signor remained on guard.