MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 618, 21 March 1929, Page 14

MUSIC

(By

F.1.R.)

Eicna Gerhardt has been engaged as a member of the faculty of the Leipzig Conservatory. Paul Hindemith has written a ballet for Dlaghileff which will be produced in March in Paris. * * * Maestro Alessandro Bustini has been appointed director of the Musical Institute of Florence. Sir Thomas Beecham conducted Handel's oratorio -Hercules" at the third concert of the London Philharmonic Society.

Ernest Dohnanyi's new comic opera, The Tenor ' will be brought out at the Royal Opera of Budapest on February 9. with Ludwig Laurissin in the title role.

Franz von Hoesslin, who conducted the "Ring” at the last two Beireuth Festivals, appeared last month in London for the first time at a concert given in Queen’s Hall.

A heavy tax has been levied by the Portuguese Government on phonographs played in coffee houses. The action was taken at the request of the Lisbon Association of Musicians.

Friends and admirers of Dame Ethel Smyth have collected a Jubilee Fund ot more than £6OO to defray the cost of a concert of her works in Berlin by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kittel Choir.

In Old Japan It is strange to read of the Schubert Centenary having been celebrated in Japan. Accounts have come to hand of two concerts given in the Grande Theatre, Takaradzuka, and a third in the Moyen Theatre, Takaradzuka. Mesdames Huzieff and Karasalowa and M. Loechner were the principal singers, collaborating with the Osaka Choral Society. ♦ * * Chamber Music With preparations in progress for the opening in Brussels of the "Grande Salle de Concerts," the concert hall of the new “Palais des Beaux-Arts” was inaugurated recently in the presence of the sovereign. It will be dedicated mainly to chamber music, w ith a seating capacity of 600. During the Schubert festival German songs were heard in Belgium for the first time since the war.

Brailowsky It is safe to forecast that Chopin works will figure largely in the programmes of Brailowsky, the Russian pianist, who will begin his Australian tour in Sydney at the Town Hall on Saturday, May 18. Brailowsky is a great Chopin student, and in Paris in 1924 he gave a series of six recitals devoted to the entire works of the Polish composer. James Davies, the eminent American critic, says Brail owsky is “one of the greatest living, if not the very greatest exponent of Chopin’s compositions.”

HELPING BEECHAM DAME NELLIE MELBA IN LONDON HER ENGLISH HOME Dame Nellie Melba, who is going to devote some of her boundless energy to helping Sir Thomas Beecham with his Imperial Opera League, is staying in London for some little time in a charming house in Cadogen Square (says the “Daily Chronicle”).

In the morning-room the other day there were countless bowls of tulips, a piano with Stravinsky’s “Le Rossignol” on it, which shows that, despite her retirement, Dame Nellie has not ceased to sing, and a number of the little signed cigarette boxes, photographs of famous Kings and Queens and objets d’art which are beloved souvenirs of a great career. Dame Nellie Melba used to have a delightful house in Mansfield Street, and she keeps open house in Australia in what she calls her “cottage.” Famous singers and musicians in Melbourne, doing an Australian tour, make a point of coming up to see her.

GLORIOUS GiANNINI

VERBRUGGHEN’S GREAT TRIBUTE Signorina Dusolina Giannini, the distinguished singer, who is to visit Australia and New Zealand under the direction of E. J. Gravestock this year, has a great admirer in Henri Verbrugghen, the famous orchestral conductor. He was present with the late Daniel Mayer, the well-known impresario, at the Carnegie Hall, New York, when Giannini made her sensational first appearance in 1923. They were both taken by surprise, and Mr. Verbrugghen remarked to his companion: “This is no debutante, this is

a great artist.” Mr. Mayer immediately signed Giannini up for a big contract, and one of her first appearances outside New York was with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, which is conducted by Mr. Verbrugghen.

Signorina Dusolina Giannini quickly became a firm favourite with Minneapolis audiences and she was honoured by being chosen as the soloist for the concerts given to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Verbrugghen always refers to the famous singer as “The Glorious Giannini,” a title which has stuck to her wherever she has sung. Giannini comes to Australia and New Zealand direct from the grand opera season at Covent Garden, where she is one of the “guest” artists this year.

STRADIVARI'S WILL FORMULA SAID TO BE DISCOVERED VARNISH OR WOOD The discovery of the will of Antonio btradivari, the famous violin maker of Cremona, is at present exciting great curiosity. & An antiquary of Bergamo, 39 miles north-east of Milan, having taken in trade an old chest, began to repair it. in making outside and inside measurements, which did not tally, he suspected the presence of a secret drawer and soon found it. In the drawer was a manuscript volume purporting to have beeu written by the Padre Theodore Bonaventura, S.J., the intimate friend of Stradivari, containing a life of the master, concerning whom there have hitherto been very little contemporaneous data known. There was also an old folio, which had been used as a scrapbook, evidently, by Stradivari, for pasted in it were his shop accounts, bills for wood and liquids, and a schedule of wages paid. Among these documents is said to have been found the formula for the famous finishing varnish, the secret of which had been lost since 1760, when the sons of Stradivari gave up violin making, although their father had died 23 years before.

Mystery of Varnish

The manuscript consists of ten pages only, and the subject is dealt with in three chapters. The first says that the wood which should be employed is only grown in a certain region on the slopes of the hills about Bergamo. The second chapter deals with the matter of preparing the wood. The third with the advantages of the various shapes of the violin. There are drawings to illustrate the text, three of which are on separate folio sheets.

Besides the biography and the monograph, the collection found in the secret drawer of the old chest contains nearly 230 separate documents. Among them are autographic notes by the sons of the master, several letters from his pupils, including the correspondence of a debate as to whether the wood or the varnish was the chief factor in producing the melodious tone. The debate was inspired by a pupil complaining that he could no longer make violins because he had no more of the master’s varnish, which meant, he writes, “everything.” Stradivari does not entirely agree with him and expatiates on the subject of wood.

Pope's Blessing

Another Important matter is solution of the mystery of what became of the full set of instruments (violin, viola, violincello and bass-viol) ordered in 1682 by the Venetian banker, Michele Monzi, for presentation to King James of England. There is a letter from King James, dated September 12, 1687, addressed in Italian to “Grande del Violino, Signor Stradivari in Cremona” (to the great man of the violin, etc.), in which his Majesty writes that Monzi had made him the present of four instruments and adds: “I never saw such beautiful fvorks of art. Cremona must consider itself lucky to have you within its walls.” In the preamble of this document Stradivari states that he was expecting the blessing of the Pope before he died, but he was afraid it would arrive too late because the couriers were “so lazy and liked to idle on their journey from Rome.”