LIFE AND ART

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 944, 10 April 1930, Page 16

LIFE AND ART

Kreisler’s Creed THOUGHTS AND PROBLEMS Fritz Kreisler, prince of violinists, touches in the following article on some thoughts and problems that perpetually engage him —a musician who in a long and glorious career has never once played perfunctorily, never once played without the whole of his heart and sensibility and restless intellect. How elusive, when it comes to verbal debate or analysis, is this art of music! To this we devote our lives, some of us, and it never stales; yes, the very notes, the harmony, the air that charmed the boy’s ear go on

acquiring riches In the mind, the grown man finds more in them, the ageing man knows that a lifetime is not enough to discover all that is in a page of Beethoven. And yet how to put anything of it into words? Language Is a sieve and music slips through its meshes. Not that musicians will, for all that, ever cease talking. Not I! And the company of musicians is the company for mo: the company, I mean, of course, of genuine artists, whose art is their passion, the most of life. That company is an escape from the greyness and the baseness of the everyday world, from mercantile calculations, from the constricting mask of social occasions. r am thinking of the company of an Ysaye. Recently I was playing in Belgium with Ysaye as conductor. The great-hearted artist! Everyone knows about the amputation he undertvent not long ago. And he over 70! Do you think his interest in music has relaxed? He could not lose interest, if he would, while he has breath in his body! And more than that. This passion of his life, this music, sustains his body and spirit. Outside the world of art what old men have achieved anything comparable with the works of the old artists, Michelangelo, Titian, Verdi? Nature Is blind and Fate cruel: yet I have a belief that there Is that in genius which defies the wastefulness of the scheme of earthly things. I believe great talent comes to light. In the furious productiveness of Raphael, of Mozart, of Schubert, was there not a defiance of the fate that was to cut their lives short—yes, a veritable victory over the stupidity of death?

Musical receptivity is not the simple thing some—even some clever men—believe It to be. A pretty chess problem is the same all over the world, just as pretty in. Dublin as in Delhi. But all the emotional experiences a man has ever had go to make his appreciation of music. There is au Absolute Good in music; an achievement (such as Bach’s, Mozart’s, Beethoven’s) that every cultivated man must recognise. But what adds passion to that recognition? Associations. I play a piece of Hungarian music in London. It is deemed picturesque. At Budapest all hearts are Inflamed with proud and quasi-mystical patriotism. The English have a veritable passion for Bach. To the artistic grandeur of the music they add all the sublime poetry, the consolation, the tenderness, the mystery of religion; for Bach is a religious composer, and the English are religious—even those who make no profession of faith having as a rule a reverent thought for the churchgoing of their childhood and for the beauty of religious buildings and ceremony and the sacred legends. I play a French, or Franco-Spanish, piece: Ravel’s “PiSce en Forme de Habanera.” In France It enchants everyone; everyone wants it twice, thrice, as often as I will or can. In Berlin an audience, a cultivated audience, listens not without curiosity, but coldly, and is taken by surprise at the ending, which is not recognised as the ending. A typical Mozartian rondo is regarded with pleasure everywhere. But .in Vienna it has a special meaning. Something in the air there chimes in with its dancing rhythm. Something In the rhythm is echoed in the hearts of everyone in the audience. Do you not suppose the artist percieves that? i For an artist is intensely aware of his audience: some instinct tells him all about them; he knows their degree of culture, of sympathy, before lie has played a note.) Thence one might develop a theory about the differences of musical taste in great centres of civilisation —why the French do not much care for Brahms, or the English for Reger, or the Americans for Elgar, who, to ray mind. Is one of the great dominating figures of the central musical tradition and whose violin concerto will in 50 years be standing out radiantly as one of the peaks in the chain of classical violin concertos, with those of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruch and Brahms.

The Vienna Opera has forbidden all applause until the curtain has fallen. This order is said to be directed against artists' cliques. “Why Wait?” To newspapermen of Detroit—the one city of size of the dozen or so in which she is to sing this season— Geraldine Farrar says in two years she plans to retire. After hearing her voice one is moved to inquire "Why Wait?" says “Top Notes,” an American publication.

Pianist’s Funeral Walter Damrosch delivered a eulogy, Josef Hofmann played Chopin’s "Funeral March,” and Jascha Heifetz played Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” when Alexander Lambert, pianist and composer, was buried recently. Mr. Lambert, who was Injured by a taxi-cab, was a staff member of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He was a protege of Rubinstein, and he had studied with Liszt, as well as under Epstein at the Vienna Conservatory. Tours with Joachim and Sarasate were included in his career as a concert pianist. To Manage Austral Mr. Leo Du Chateau, in charge of the Westminster Glee Singers, left for Tasmania by the Ulimaroa. After brief seasons at Hobart and Launceston, the company will cross to Melbourne, where a four weeks’ season will be begun in the King’s Theatre on April 12. After seeing the company get into its stride, Mr. Du Chateau will proceed to Sydney to 1 orgjanlse the Australian and New Zea- ' land tour of the famous dramatic ; soprano, Florence Austral, who, with i her husband, John Amadio, is due to open at the Sydney Town Hall on May 27, under the direction of Mr. E. J. Carroll. A cable special from London to the Sydney newspapers on February 17 announced: “Florence Austral has been invited to make 12 appearances in opera at the State Opera House at Berlin after her return from her tour of Australia and New 1 Zealand.” • * * International Music The League of Nations has issued a report made to the Commission of Intellectual Co-operation by Felix Welngartner on the subject of music. Ways and means to establish closer contacts between nations in this field are discussed at length. Mr. Weingartner proposes, among other things, the establishment of an international Programme Exchange,” similar to one that existed in Germany before the war. Concert managers, opera directors, and individual artists could subscribe to the service and thus familiarise themselves with the trends in musical taste in all countries. Mr. Weingartner also recommends the issuance of an annual catalogue compiled from information furnished by music publishers in all countries as to new works about to appear. Other matters he discusses have to do with an international music journal, the education in music of children and young people through special concerts and other means, and the establishment and subsidising of a commission to collect folk music of many lands.