Edouard Remenyi.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5047, 17 March 1885, Page 3

Edouard Remenyi.

* This talented musician, who has de* lighted his audiences wherever ho has performwl. will giro a concert (under the patronage, and in the presence of, His Worship the Mayor) in the Academy of Music on Saturday night next, lie is Hungarian by birth, Bftr-one years of a X e, and a contemporary of Joachim, who was a pupil of Boehmn in Vienna. In 1848 he took part in the insurrection against AuitriaVand was ■«•*"**•«""* Gcrserj. Compelled to fly, he first took ': refuge in America, then was for some time with Lisst,,in Weimar.. In 1841 he wa. ij»poinied's vplp Violini»tto Q««en Victoria,,

! succeeding Sainton, He remained in London until 1860. whon, obtaining pardon, he returned to Austria, and soon received marks of favor from his Sovereign. For-a time ho lived in private, but in 1856 went to Paris, where he delighted the musical world. Germany, HollanJ, and Belgium were visited ; 1875-77 found him in Paris ; late in 1877 he went to London, playing once only in public, and again in 1878, while on his way to America*. He afterwards visited Australia, and is now making a tour through New Zealand. In a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald oh the piecrs liefer formed at the seventeen concerts, he gave there, he wrote :—" I never play popular music; 'I simply play good -'music.; and if I except my own compositions, of which I playpd about 12 0r14.1 played (besides the works of the masters I hare named) also a few well-known national melodies, such as " Auld Eobin Gray," " The Campbells are coming," " The Last Rose of Summer," ",Rule Brittannia," and, by request, " The Marseilliase," which! played for the first time in public, when requested by some one in the audience to do so. All I can say about these melodies is, that I wish T was the composer of any of those above-named lovely, grand* and heroic strains; but, alas I am noty and of course not omnia possumus omries, so we must leave the entire glory to the known and unknown composers of those sublime and loftily noble popular melodies. lam not ashamed to' play them, I glorify myself in doing so, and I am doing ad astrahy playing them, and with them. One of those melodies is worth a thousand so-called popular ballads, which, as musical compositions, have no earthly value at all. Most certainly those average popular ballads are stiltborn, ephemeral compositions whereas the melodies I mentioned have the franchise, of entering the gates of heaveu, where they are received by the angels with joyful acclamation. Those terrible average, common-place, sugar«. loaded ballads, which are composed and printed in every civilised country of this world by the thousand, never .will get the heaven-, franchise. The Schubert, Schuman, Beethoven, Mozart, Kobert Franz, Men* delssohn, and other artistic songs will entej\ WhyP Because they were nobly inspired, 'and the composers added to their popular inspirations their wonderful artistic acquirements, and dressed their hea'enborn inspirations in gorgeous garbs. The great tone-poets had big souls; when they are interpreted they don't want to be interpreted by a night-cap and cotton-souled pseudo artist, but by somebody who is their humble and truthful devotee. For whom does Beethoven, the giant, compose his eternal grand works but for- the multitude ? What is his ninth symphony —this crowning glory in our musical literature-rbut a world-grand voice spoked to the millions by a grand tonepoet? The very words in its heavenly finale embrace with one kiss the whole humanity (Schiller's "Ode of Joy"). As I said, in interpreting the works of the masters, the artist must put bis whole soul in his work, and be in constant adoration of it. Interpreted thus, everybody will understand them ; if diffierently, they will not. I have been all my life a humble, and truthful devotee of the great masters, and of everything beautiful.—Ed. Bemenyi.