THE MUSICAL WORLD

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 208, 30 May 1936, Page 25

THE MUSICAL WORLD

By

C.J.M.

Stray Noles. Miss Dorothy Mills, accompanist to the Royal Wellington Choral Union, is leaving early next month on a visit to England. Madame Winnie Fraser, the wellknown singer, leaves next week on an extended visit to China, Japan, Russia and England.

The first concert of the Royal Wellington Choral Union’s 11)30 season will take place on Saturday, July 11, when Mr. Alfred Hill's “Hinemoa” will be presented. The Christchurch Musical Society is at present rehearsing “The Bohemian Girl.”

The Royal Wellington ChdralrtU'nion last week commenced rehearsals on "Elijah,” which work will be performed on Saturday, August 15, with Dr. Malcolm Sargent, of London, as guest conductor. Edward German’s “Merrie England” is now being rehearsed by the New Plymouth Choral Society. Mr. Alfred O’Shea, the Irish-Aus-tralian tenor, who was here a few years ago, has been singing in Canada. During February and March he appeared as soloist with the symphony orchestra in Ottawa, and in Toronto with the Mendelssohn Choir.

Madame Margherita Zelanda will appear with orchestra shortly, during the course of an Australian tour which the Australian Broadcasting Commission has arranged for her (states a Sydney paper). This coloratura soprano, as her adopted name suggests, hails from New Zealand. She spent some years studying in Italy, at the Conservatorium of Palermo. Miss Dorothea Helmrich, touring in blew Zealand for the Broadcasting Board, goes later to Australia. During the present year Miss Helmrich Iris given recitals in London, the Scandinavian cities, Warsaw and Latvia. A New Zealander’s Feast.

It has been a good crowded season of music, writes Mr. Trevor Fisher, the young New Zealand pianist who went abroad a few years ago to perfect his art, in a letter from Loudon dated April 5. In the autumn the best concerts I heard were the two given by the Busch Ensemble of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, for both of which the Queen’s Hall was sold out. Recently the Busch Quartet gave three magnificent recitals at the Wigmore Hall, demonstrating yet again their supremacy in the German classics. The Pro Arte Quartet (Belgian) is more versatile, playing, as well as the Viennese classics, Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and other moderns and exotics; but no quartet has the authoritative rendering of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms to the degree the Busch has, and there is no violinist in whom skill, musicianship and integrity are so highly developed and evenly balanced as in Adolf Busch himself.

His “partner at the piano,” Rudolf Serkin, whose playing in violin and piano sonatas is familiar to gramophiles, grows in reputation; in Vienna he is regarded as the most promising of the generation now reaching maturity, but in London he has made no big public “hit,” although musicians are enthusiastic over him. There is a probity about German and Austrian pianists which prevents them ever from playing to the gallery, as the RussianJews and the French and Italians and Spaniards do. In my opinion the greatest pianists are Schnabel, Gieseking, Wuhrer, Fischer (Edwin!), Serkin and Backhaus. Horowitz is phenomenal, but quite superficial. So is Rachmaninoff. And Cortot has so degenerated as to be valueless most of the time. There is a host of brilliant technicians and sensation-mongers—no doubt they add to the gaiety of life—but for deep musical satisfaction these German and Austrian pianists are the best. Nor are they all confined to the GermanAustrian classics, for Giesekiiig and Fischer are the two most versatile pianists at. the present time. I heard the former, one afternoon, play Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy and Strauss-Laurier with superb effect, each convincing and better (it seemed) than I’d heard ever before.

Wuhrer is one of those pianists who subordinate everything to what they conceive to be the composer's intentions, himself going almost to the extreme, so that he is simply a musician’s musician, and fails to capture the larger publie, which must be stimulated by ex_citing technical displays and exaggerated emotionalism. A concert he gave with Cassado recently proved to be a gem among chamber concerts—they played piano and ’cello sonatas by Bach, Beethoven (A major) and Brahms (E minor) in a way that can be only vaguely described as illuminating. Wuhrer (who is Viennese) has now a big reputation in Germany, and has recently left the old traditionbound centre Mannheim (where Mozart heard the best orchestra of the day) for Kiel, a large and growing modern city, to he director of the music school there.

Of pianists recently emerged from novitiate, the most brilliant and modern I’ve heard is a Californian, Webster Aitken, whom I first heard in Vienna. Austere in style, and intellectual in approach, he is one of the most penetrating interpreters of Beethoven and Schubert, whose sonatas, under his agile fingers, are shown for the lovely—and lively—creations they are (and not diffuse sentimental stretches of sound). And a new violinist —from Sweden —who impressed me is Sven Karpe, whose "electric” playing of Scandinavian music quite dispelled my old impressions of it as “small,” merely folk-music-ish, and redolent of restaurants. It was a revelation to hear Grieg and more recent composers, including some extraordinarily fresh and vital modern stuff, played as they were meant to be played, and not “slopped over.” Karl Flesch now lives in London, and has a large “master class” at Swiss Cottage, the new German “quarter.” Elena Gerhart lives nearby, Max Rostal now stays in London, and last week Nicolas Medtmer came to stay. The music-life of the city has been greatly enriched lately. Adila Fachisi, the busiest teacher in London, recently found time to give three recitals, including a splendid Bach one, and Suggia came over from Barcelona to give three. Another frequent recitalist is Isolde Menges, who, with Ivor James, and other colleagues, gives several recitals of quartets and .sextets every season. The Philharmonic, under Beecham, has played more brilliantly than ever this season. This afternoon they finished their winter season with such brilliance that the audience became almost hysterical with excitement — certainly it was a “popular” programme —but when (without precedent) they gave an encore, and that encore was the Rakoczy March from Berlioz’s “Damnation of Faust” (the whole of which they’d given last week), some people went quite wild, one man in the gallery shouting so madly that the orchestra looked up with amusement. The 8.8. C. and the London Symphony Orchestras have wound up their winter series. The L.S.O. give an annual performance of Bach’s Art of Fugue under Hans Weisbach —a unique and deeply moving work, written (evidently) to be read only, but orchestrated a few years ago, and now performed frequently. I have heard it said that Tovey’s less-coloured orchestral version of it is preferable.

Tovey is a Titan among musicians. Casals calls him the greatest artist of the day. Tovey calls Casals the greatest artist. They are old friends, and it is a rare experience to hear them working together. But most people prefer Tovey the writer to Tovey the composer, conductor and pianist. Musicians seem unanimous in voting him the greatest musical scholar of the day, and as a teacher he is certainly one of the greatest. His prose (essays on Gluck and Schubert, Form and Matter, the Companion to Beethoven's Sonatas, and Programme Notes .for the Reid Orchestra)" is magnificent.

I may be going to South Africa on tour, and possibly to Sweden for the summer. I wish I could make a tour of New Zealand! A winter in London makes us colonials crave sunshine and clean air.