THE MUSICAL WORLD

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 80, 28 December 1935, Page 17

THE MUSICAL WORLD

By

C.J.M.

British Music. About 30 of the leading music critics of Europe are to be invited to London shortly to listen to . British music, in the hope that they will be able to correct the still prevalent impression abroad that music in Great Britain is of negligible importance. The critics will be the guests of the British Council for Relations With Other Countries, an influential body which was formed last March to promote in foreign countries a wider knowledge of the cultural and other aspects of our national life. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Bridge, the clerk of the council, said recently : “There is still a feeling abroad that Germany and Italy are the only great musical countries. There is great ignorance of the musical renaissance in Great Britain. A young conductor from Iceland, who has been over here, said to me: ‘German music is declining, English music is on the up ° “An influential committee was recently formed with the object of making known on the Continent our everwidening music activities and the work that is being done by our orchestras, conductors, composers and artists. Our male voice choirs, for instance, are unique. “We are working on parallel lines with the British Broadcasting Corporation, and there is no idea of competing in any way with them. They are sending their orchestra on a Continental tour next April, and among other things we are considering the question of sending an orchestra. We are hoping that these distinguished foreign critics will be able to pay this country a visit and see and hear for themselves. The details have not been settled, and we have yet to decide to whom the invitations should be sent.” Amy Sherwin Passes.

Madame Amy Sherwin, whose death at the age of 81 was announced recently, was the first of the Australian sopranos, and became known as the “Tasmanian Nightingale." She sang in opera at Covent Garden, and made many successful tours in all parts of the world, commanding big fees. At the end she had no money to pay for the nursing home where she lived her last days. But she was not entirely forgotten, and a few friends remained constant to her. Mr. L. G. Sharpe, the concert agent, who had toured with her in the days when she knew fame, was one. “Amy Sherwin in her day was a very popular artist.” he said in a “Sunday Times” interview. “I ■was on tour with her several times about 30 or 35 years ago in England, and then I managed a 40weeks' tour for her in Australia. “She had a very fine career. I suppose that at one time she would have been earning between £3OOO and £5OOO a year. She used to live in very good style at Hampstead, and she had a big house which had a splendid musicroom, where she used to have concerts. After she gave up singing, she did a lot of teaching.

“At the end, however, she had nothing to live on. and the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund had been looking after her. Yet, when I last saw her a little while ago, she was still bright and smiling. We spoke of the old days, about her tour in Australia, and humorous incidents which she still remembered. She was happy talking about those days, and she. never complained,"

Attention was called to her plight last year while she was a patient in one of the free wards of Charing Cross Hospital. She sang one day as she lay in bed, and the doctors and nurses were amazed at the beauty of the voice which years before had enraptured King Edward when Prince of Wales. Born in a lonely homestead in the Tasmanian bush, she was singing one day in the paddock, when still a child. An Italian opera impresario heard her and at once gave her an engagement. Within a few weeks she made her debut at the Opera House, Melbourne. "When she was appearing in oratorio at Sydney, New South Wales, Mr. Hugo Gorlitz, the director of the concert. sent her her first bouquet, and they were married within a few months. After singing in the different colonies she went to America, where she created the part of Marguerite in Berlioz’s “Faust.” Eventually she came to Europe to study. She later sang at Covent Garden, and made tours in the provinces and in Scotland under Mr. August Manns and Sir Charles Halle. Though she had such great successes abroad, she always said that she loved singing to the British public. Music Public’s “Snobbery.”

The snobbery of the British public in demanding singers and musicians with foreign names was criticised by Sir Landon Ronald, principal of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, at the annual presentation of prizes at the Mansion House. Recalling the new prima donna with tile Italian name of Lisa Perli, who took London by storm as Mimi in “La Boheme,” Sir Landon said she was “our own dear little Dora Labbette, who came to the Guildhall School as a youngster 20 years ago. “The fact,” he continued, “that she and her friends considered it wise to take an Italian name—and she has since stated that it is only as Lisa Perli that she ever wants to be known in future —is, to my mind, a serious reflection on the intelligence of the English public. “It means that the public are still such snobs that unless artists have a foreign name they are not interested in them. “Can you imagine any German, Italian or French artist dreaming of taking an English name so that he or she might have success in his or her native country? It is only in this country, that such a thing could occur. “It might have been a little more excusable 30 or 40 years ago, when I was a youngster, because then you could count the great English artists on your two hands. But to-day we have just as many great artists here as are to be found abroad. “We have intsrumentalists and singers here who can be compared with the best that come from abroad. I am not ■ referring in particular to the few great ‘stars’ of the world, such as Kreisier, Horowitz, Corto, Heifetz, Lottie Lehmann, and a few others. These people, to me. have no nationality; they belong to the world. But the status of your other artists and composers is not to be beaten, and in many cases not to be equalled abroad. “I feel quite sure, having myself witnessed her performance, that Lisa Perli will go very far, not only here, but probablv all over the world. She has to study her own interests, and it is probably on account of those interests that she thought it wise.to drop her English name,”