SINGERS AND PLAYERS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 177, 25 July 1908, Page 12

SINGERS AND PLAYERS

Kiibelik is back in Australia, giving return concerts in Melbourne and Sydney. In the Sydney concerts, on August 3 and | 4, the great violinist will be assisted by j Signor de Beaupuis, who has not played ' in public for some years. The late W. E. Healey's 'beautiful poem, "Sing to mc, sing again thou deep-throated nightingale," was dedicated to Ada Crossley by the poet after having heard her sing. Many of Mr Henley's verses have been set to music by Charles Willaby, of New Zealand. Miss Myrtle Meggy, the talented young pianist, who has recently returned to England from a nine months' tour with Madame Albani in Australia, New Zealand, and India, gave her only recital this season on May 29. Miss Meggy (says an English paper) is one of the many talented artists that Australia has cent us, and it is interesting to note that she received her first lessons from her father, who is a journalist, and is now on the staff ot a paper at Hobart. Miss Alys Bateman received considerable kudos on the occasion of the Empire Day concert at the Royal Albert Hall. A detailed criticism of the concert is obviously beyond the scope of a short notice (says "The Crown"), but it is only fair to pay a tribute to the courage and musicianship of Miss Alys Bateman, who undertook at a moment's notice the work set down for Madame Albani, who was incapacitated from appearing. Mme. Melba has been interviewed in London by the correspondent of an American newspaper. "Why are you a great singer?" he asked cheerfully. "If I am," answered she, pat, "it is because I cannot help it." "Is your voice as good or better than ever?" asked the journalist, who seems to have been perfectly at his ease. "Why ask such a silly question ? Of course, it's better. Otherwise, why am I here? What other answer could you expect mc to make?" (What, indeed?) Percy Grainger, the pianist, in his search for folk songs, asked an old Yorkshire countryman to write down the words of a song that he had for sometime been in search of. The ancient willingly assented, and calmly stripped off a length of his drawing-room wall-paper to use as writing material. People often ask Percy Grainger now why he treasures a rough piece of highly floral wallxiper among his relics. But history does not state what the feelings of the landlord were when next he called round for the rent of that cottage. Mr. Harold Gregson, who was solo organist at the Crystal Palace, London, in July last year, and is director of the Emma Willard Conservatory of Music, New York, is in Sydney, accompanied by Mrs. Gregson. They are on their way across here. Mr. Gregson was organist at the Christehurch Exhibition, now nearly a couple of years back. The Berlin opera tins season is giving a complete cycle of all Wagner's works, beginning with '-Reinzi," which will be performed for the hundredth time. Mmc. Tetrazzini found herself unable to sing at Mme. Melba's concert for the King's Hospital Fund, at Covent Garden, on June 24. The refusal of the great diva to assist Melba in such a notaole charitable "function" c used some comment. Miss Marie Hall received some highly eulogistic notices for her Queen's Hall concert at the end of May. There is a good sentence from "The Crown": "The concert closed with the first movement of Paganini's Concerto in D major, Op. 6, in which Miss Marie Hall triumphed over the most hideous difficulties with an ease that was little short of phenomenal." Mark Hambourg had a fine reception from a crowded house at the S\-dnev Town Hall on July ISth, where he provei to an enthusiastic audience that his genius had mellowed and matured, his art had broadened and heightened, and his technique had vastly improved. Such a result was only to be expected, for, when out here before, while his performance as a virtuoso was remarkable, his renderings were often unsympathetic to the borders of harshness. Mr. Boris Hambourg (Mr. Mark Hamhourg's brother) and Mr. Jan Hambourg and their quartet party have been engaged for a tour of 35 concerts in South Africa. An interesting series of violin recitals, arranged in historical sequence, has just been concluded in London, at the Aeolian Hall, by Mr. Jan Hambourg. The first devoted to early Italian masters, the second to early French. German and British music, the third to composers of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the fourth to music from Mendelssohn and Tschaikowsky, and last to living composers. Sir Charles Santlcy is convinced that strongly-scented flowers are injurious to health and have a most pernicious effect upon the voice. In his little book on "The Art of Singing" he gives a number of instances from his .own experiences to prove this, and especially condemns the perfume of the gardenia, stephanotis, hyancith, jonquil, wood-violet, lily, and flowers of that class. He says he has been often laughed at for what people were pleased to term his "fad, ,, nevertheless he always insisted upon the removal of such flowers from any stage where he was required to sing. "My opinion," he adds, was confirmed by Morell Mackenzie on an occasion on which I met him at a party where I was singing. He told mc that the exhalations from flowers, especially such as those I have before enumerated, have, the effect of paralysing to a greater or less extent the nerves of the throat, and so render the voice husky, even to hoarseness."