A TRULY HAPPY DAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 15

A TRULY HAPPY DAY.

"I began yesterday by swimming in a sunliU sea, continued it by motoring through a hundred miles of like and gorse, and ended it listening •to the most perfect concert programme at Queen's Hall that I have ever heard." writes Mr. Filson Young in the Pall Mall. "And while I listened to Irene Scharrer playing Schumann's pianoforte concerto as now only she can play it, I felt as though I had really been in the same environment all day, so solvent, so Unifying is the effect of great music finely rendered. "It seemed to me that the sparkle of breaking waves, the glory of all those green and*golden miles, as well as (what it directly expresses) the beauty and fret of woman's life and love, were in the music; but the player swam in the flood of ' it, shaking the spray of its surges from her head as she rose breasting them ; that the keys brushed by her flying fingers were milestones on a journey of melody ; that the fingers themselves were like wings, that flashed and Hew from dawn to sunset. "Was 'it not a happy day?"

An increased public interest in Slavonic music and the coming Russian season at Di'ury»lant> are no doubt responsible for a "History of Russian Music," by Mr. Montagu-Nathan, which is announced by William Reeves. The work gives an account of the rise and progress of the Russian school of composers, with a survey of their lives and a description of their works. Mr. Mon-tagu-Nathan is well known in musical circles, and has done much to bring about a better understanding and appreciation of BussiaU music.