MUSIC.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19197, 13 June 1924, Page 3

MUSIC.

NOTES AND RECORDS. The following letter, signed “ Broadway,’’ appeared in a recent issue oi' a London paper:—-“Since my arrival hero 1 have wandered aronnd the dance-halls of London, and wonder whore the good orchestras are playing. In America we foresaw that the violent type of jazz music would in time wear the nerges out and that a more soothing music would be required to rest the nerves, hence the refined type of syncopated music which is becoming the rage in America and Canada. You Londoners are amusing. You imagine that if an orchestra comes from the States it must be a good one, and you do not seem to bother much about your home talent. The orchestras you have in London to-day that are from the States or American Continent would, to use one of our ‘ expressigisms,’ ‘ not get by.’ In a search for a real good orchestra in England and on the Continent, I have found one right here in London, but no doubt we must take them over to New- York, label them American, and send them back before Londoners will appreciate them.” Audiences have been small and languid at a good many London concerts of the past winter (writes Richard Capell in the Daily Mail), and woebegone concert-givers have jumped from that to the conclusion that there is a crisis in our music. Well, there have certainly been a few bad cases of the public’s unjust neglect. But I suggest that the majority of woebegone concert-givers should candidly ask themselves whether they, if they were the public, would consider their own concerts worth the trouble and cost of attending—worth the journey, perhaps, from Peckham or Putney, the sacrifice of a whole evening’s leisure? They should look for a moment at the great successful ones. There is no sign then of the “crisis.” When Kussevitski conducts, or Busoni plays the piano, or Chaliapin sings, music suddenly lives with a radiance, an energy you could not have imagined. What is the secret of such artists? Not simply musical talent. It is a matter of superior vitality. What happens when Kussevitsky conducts? The orchestra, whom you had perhaps heard the week before playing with the air ot saying. “ We have done all this or something like it countless times, such apparently is our fate until death,” are transformed. Part of the genius of such a man for concert-giving lies in his conviction (which he makes you feel) that this night —the night you have chosen to come up from Putney, or wherever it may be, to hear $ him—is the supreme night of his life. He may have conducted this piece of Schubert or Tchaikovsky a hundred times before, but he thoroughly persuades himself for the time being that he is more interested in it than in all the rest of music put together. He communicates his passion to the orchestra (that is part of a conductor’s gift), and they play as though their playing were to endure as their monument for ever. And in the light of this vitality the music— Schubert, who is hackneyed, Tchaikovsky, who is vulgar—is transformed, like Scottish mountains when, on the last day of a dripping holiday, the sun comes out and giv*s you a glimpse of Paradise! According to a New York message the illness of Ping Lung, the 15-ycar-old Pekingese pet of of Mme. Ignace Paderewski, caused her husband, the renowned pianist, recently to cancel his concert engagements and rush from Sionx Falls -o Chicago, in search of the most skilled veterinary treatment. Chicago’s most celebrated veterinary diagnosed Ping’s ailment as rhinitis (inflammation of the nose) complicated by gastritis. He prescribed a long rest and careful diet. The Federation of British Music Industries has called the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the disastrous consequences that would follow the removal of the M’Kenna duties. Lieut.Colonel R. H. Tatton, organising director of the federation told a Daily- Mail reporter that the minimum craft wage for the musical instrument making trade has not fallen below Is 9Jd an hour for the last two years—a figure which, he states, ,is higher* than any other standard prat I rate in this country. He added: “That has only been made possible by the M’Kenna duties. The making of pianoactions in this country for the cheaper kinds of instrument is practically a postwar industry. This section of the trade employed 150 people before the war. Now it employs 800. The making of gramophone motors is another new industry, now giving employment to 1000 persons. If the M’Kenna duties are not continued both these trades will be flooded out with foreign made goods, factories will have to bo dosed down, and employees dismissed.” Every month shows somewhere, and in some way, an extraordinary growth of interest in matters concerning the gramophone, whether of instruments, of records, of personalia (writes Mr Robin H. Le gg e in the Daily Telegraph). In point of lact broadcasting and the genus piano-player, likewise “mechanical”, instruments, are enjoying their share in the development, and it does seem true, in part at any rate, that the old order is changing, giving a good deal of place to the new. A year or two ago if the enthusiast wished to pursue inquiries in these or kindred joys he was compelled to search for knowledge in either a trade paper or a paper that was essentially technical. Now the great dailies devote serious attention to the matters in spite of the fact of the existence of journals of specialised character. ’Thus the new order is rapidly becoming an essential part of life. The current issues of that intensely serious musical monthly, The Chesterian, contains articles on no less than four subjects of the new order. Walter Krarfier writes on “The Artistic ‘Canning’ of Music George Tootell on “Cinema Music and its Future;” Percy Scholcs on “Broadcasting,” and F’.dwin ttvans on “The Pianola in Modem Music”—and this is possibly the most “reserved” musical monthly we possess! Does this not tend to point to development? The record of Brahm’s Sonata in D Minor as rendered by Arthur Catherall (violin) .and William Murdoch (piano) should be of unusual interest. It is generally considered that though Brahms wrote almost all kinds of music except operatic, it is in his chamber music that his greatness is most clearly revealed, and the three sonatas for violin and piano, belonging as they do to the period when his art had reached its full maturity, rank among his finest work. This, the D Minor sonata, is the third of the set, and, as usual with Brahms, the most notable feature is the absolute suitability of the music to the instruments—the violin part seeming the spirit of the violin, the piano part born of that instrument. Play either part on any other instrument and its charm is destroyed. Messrs Catterall and Murdoch are said to make an ideal pair of executants.