MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 706, 4 July 1929, Page 14

MUSIC

(By

F.1.R.)

The house of Novello has taken over the publication of all the church music and choral compositions of Sir Walford Davies.

Vittorio Ginnini, brother of the wellknown singer, Dusolina Giannini, has composed a sonata in E minor for violin and piano.

Paderewski's Next Tour

Paderewski, after two years’ absence, is to play seventy-five concerts

in America next season, returning October 15 and appearing in New York on November 8 at Carnegie Hall. The Polish pianist and former Premier spent the past winter giving recitals in England, France and Italy. Belgium, Holland,

Elsa Menzel, a pupil of Franz Liszt, died recently in her seventy-third year, in Berlin. Liszt praised her talent in several of his letters. The Stradivari Quartet of Moscow has given 150 concerts this season, thirty of which were played free of charge in workingmen’s clubs. About 40,000 union men heard these recitals. The quartet is planning a tour of Germany shortly. * • . Mozart’s curious composition, "DaVidde Penitente,” which was written as a contribution to a fund organised in Vienna in 1785 for the benefit of musicians’ widows, has just been revived in Munich after having been overlooked or forgotten for nearly half a century.

A new suite by Kurt Weill, called “Drei Groschen,” was recently performed for the first time in Berlin. The music is based on themes from “The Beggar’s Opera,” and is described as “popular music, full of boisterous humour, buffoonery and sarcasm, skilfully transcribed for piano and orchestra.”

The seventeenth German Bach festival of the new Bach Society was held at Leipzig from June 8 to 10. Like all previous Bach festivals at Leipzig, it was opened by the famous motet at the Church of St. Thomas. Choir, orchestra and studio concerts followed, as well as varied lectures.

Salzburg Session At Salzburg the music session will bpen on August 4, continuing through August 30. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Strauss’s “Rosenkavalier” and Beethoven’s “Fidelio” are among the operas to be performed under the direction of Clemens Krauss, Franz Schalk and others. In addition, there are to be eight festival concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Krauss, Baumgartner and Schalk.

New “Beggar’s Opera” Leo Nikulin, a Russian playwright, connected with the Satyrical Theatre of Moscow, is studying in Berlin the performances of the “Beggar’s Opera” there, which he is to adapt for the Russian stage, says the B.Z. am Mittag. Besides colouring the opera with numerous bolshevistic references, Nikulin is preparing a threefold endiug. Following the escape of MacHeath from the gallows, the audience will be asked to decide by a vote which of the three inamoratas he will marry.

New Opera House Rumours that Sir Thomas Beecliam is to build an opera house on the site of Landsdowne House have been denied. To a representative of “The Daily Telegraph” Sir Thomas said he has first to create an opera public, which does not exist in London at present, and that that will take a considerable time. Sir Thomas’s policy will be to give performances in ordinary theatres at first until his public is assured, and not till then will he think of building.

Army Pitch Orders issued recently to British Army bands that they are to play in the same pitch with civilian musical organisations have revealed that for forty years the army bands have been playing out of tune with the others, the military pitch being half a tone higher. “Another discovery,” says “The Baltimore Sun,” “is that for years many military bands have not even played in tune with one another. One story goes back to the close of the Crimean War, when a victory celebration was held. “Massed bands of many regiments, called upon to play “God Save the King,” struck up such a variety of arrangements and keys and with results so appalling that the Commander-in-Chief immediately initiated a movement for the establishment of a military school of music." Florence Austral, the Australian

soprano, scored a wonderful triumph when she interpreted the role of Brunnhilde in “The Valkyries,” at the Cov en t Garden Grand Opera House on May 16. Critics were unanimous that her singing of the Wagaerian music was natchless.