WORLD OF MUSIC

Southland Times, Issue 19393, 6 November 1924, Page 9

WORLD OF MUSIC

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

(By

"Presto."

In the Municipal Theatre next Wednesday, the Cherniavsky trio will give a concert. It is now some years since this worldfamed trio paid a visit to Invercargill and local music lovers are looking forward to the recital with eager anticipation.

To-morrow week the Invercargill Orphans’ Club wall give a concert in the Municipal Theatre.

A very popular and brilliant young British pianist, Dorothea Vincent, is about to visit New Zealand. Miss Vincent will arrive late in November, and it is hoped will arrange to play in all the important musical centres of the Dominion. Miss Vincent, who passed through the Royal Academy of Music (London) with great distinction, obtaining the much-coveted associateship (A.R.C.M.), has been trained by HowardJones, the famous pianist, and is one of the best-known of his professional pupils. Miss Vincent has given frequent recitals in London and elsewhere in England, and has played in Queen’s Hall under the baton of Sir Heniy Wood, and has also appeared with the best-known provincial orchestras. She has hosts of admirers in all parts of England, and no doubt the charm of her personality, her unusually brilliant technique, and the sincerity of her interpretations will achieve for her an equal popularity in the Dominion.

Clara Schumann, the devoted wife of Robert Schumann, was a great artist, but nothing if partisan in her predilections. In the following extract from her diary (dated Klosters, August, 1875, and quoted by Berthold Litzmann) we learn what she thought of Wagner's “Tristan und Isolde” when she first heard it. One should remember that the musical world of Germany was at that time divided between the Brahmsites and the Wagnerites. Brahms was a life-long friend of the Schumanns, and owed his discovery to Robert’s critical discernment. Brahms and Wagner themselves never approved of the partisanship displayed by their admirers. “We went to Tristan und Isolde’ this evening,” she writes. “It is the most repulsive thing I ever saw or heard in my life. To have to sit through a whole evening watching and listening to such love-lunacy till every feeling of decency was outraged, and to see not only the audience, but the musicians, delighted with it was—l may well say—the saddest experience of my whole artistic career. I held out to the end, as I wished to have heard it all. Neither of them does anything but sleep and sing during the second act, and the whole of Act 3—quite 40 minutes—Tristan occupies in dying—and they call that dramatic! Levi says that Wagner is a better musician than Gluck!

. . . Are they fools or am I a fool? The subject seems to me so wretched; a love-madness brought about by a potion—how is it possible to take the slightest interest in the lovers? It is not emotion, it is a disease, and they tear their hearts out of their bodies, while the music expresses it all in the most repulsive manner. I could go on lamenting over it for ever, and exclaiming against it.” . . . Notwithstanding Mme. Schumann’s violence, many musicians will say, “Oh, to be 18 again and hear Tristan’ for the first time!”

Young musicians who want to play only “modern” pieces may read with profit the words of H. C. Banister, a once-distinguished English teacher. They are taken from his book, “Interludes,” compiled from seven Lectures delivered between the years 1891 and 1897. “Beware of thinking that a century or two ago, the art (of music) was in its infancy,” he writes, “or that those who then produced music were mere babes, or even —by a paradoxical perversity—estimating them as ‘old fogies.’ You see, or hear, or try to play, a modern piece of music, with many notes in a bar; perhaps very fine but not because of its many notes. And then you turn to an older work with very few notes and think it slender, and almost imagine that the composer did not put down more notes because he could not think of any; the few expressed his clearly defined strong ideas. Did you ever observe, or think, how muqh there is, in small compass, and with small show, in one of Bach’s two-part ‘lnventions,’ which you may have almost set aside as dry little exercises, and would have been ready to join some one that I once heard say concerning the children who were condemned—mark you, not privileged— to play them, ‘Poor litfle things!’ ”

King Louise Philippe of France had given Rossini a beautiful repeating watch. Rossini, proud of this gift, carried it in his waistcoat pocket for many years. One day, while he was showing it to some friends, a man who was passing by accosted him and said, “Rossini, you do not know the secret of your watch, although you have carried it for so many years. Will you permit me to disclose it to you?” Rossini, with a knowing smile, handed it to him. The unknown man touched a spring and the bottom of the case opened. The startled maestro saw his own portrait in miniature surrounded by an enamelled inscription, in arabic characters. The unknown, who was the maker of the watch, refused to tell Rossini the meaning of the inscription, although Rossini pleaded with him to do so. From that time Rossini conceived such an invincible dislike for the watch that he put it away in a box where his heirs lately discovered it, covered with dust. The popular notion of a composer feverishly pounding at the piano in search of “inspiration” is not borne out by the following statement of Sir Arthur Sullivan, of “Pinafore” fame, in a biography of him written by Arthur Lawrence. Sullivan may have lacked depth, but he did not lack spontaneity, gaiety, and even tender pathos; not to mention sound musicianship. “Of course the use of the piano,” Sir Arthur remarks, “would limit me terribly, and as to the inspirational theory, although I admit that sometimes a happy phrase will occur to one quite unexpectedly rather than the result of any definite reasoning process, musical composition, like everything else, is the result of hard work and there is really nothing speculative or spasmodic about it. Moreover, the happy thoughts which seem to come to one only occur after hard work and steady persistence. It will always happen that one is better ready for work needing inventiveness at one time than another. One day work is hard and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down and work out every vein carefully.” MUSICAL TALENT. NEW ZEALANDERS IN LONDON. LONDON, September 18. At the personal invitation of Mr John McEwen, principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Mr Maurice d’Oisly is about to join the professional staff of this eminent centre of music culture. The invitation was a very attractive one, and as Mr d’Oisly will take a limited number of vocal students only the position will not interfere with his public career. The appointment is interesting, too, for the reason that Mr d’Oisly was himself trained at R.AJM.

The New Zealand friends of Miss Valerie Corliss (Wellington) will be interested to learn that she has had the great honour conferred upon her of being selected as a Preparer for the Matthay School of Music. For the past year Miss Corliss has been studying with Mr Tobias Matthay, taking the teachers’ course as well as that of executant. This new qualification will give her experience in London at the Matthay School. When she was in England previously she studied the teaching side of the pianoforte at the Royal Academy of Music. As a pianist, Miss Corliss will make her first

appearance in London, at the Wigmore Hall, on October 29th. This will be a joint recital, for Miss Eileen Driscoll (Wellington) will be the vocalist, and a very pleasant New Zealand musical evening is promised.

Madame Winnie Fraser (Christchurch and Dunedin) is spending a few weeks in London. She went to the Continent last December, visiting Italy and Southern France before going to Austria. In Vienna she has spent seven most profitable and interesting months of vocal study with Professor G. Manzoni, taking both lieder and grand opera. In addition, she heard all the best in that wonderful musical centre, where every member of the public lives in an atmosphere of music and attends the numerous concerts and presentations of grand opera. In October, Madame Fraser will return to Vinna for further study, and at the end of November she will give two lieder recitals in Budapest, one in Vienna, and one in Salzburg. At the recital which she gave in Vienna a few months ago, she introduced some Maori songs by Alfred Hill and Marcel Doreen, and they had a rapturous reception, being something quite new in Austria. Madame Fraser has made arrangements for her return passage to New Zealand. She will join her steamer at Trieste for Port Said, and visit Mr and Mrs E. A. Turner at Assiut. Mr Turner, it may be recalled, was formerly in the Bdnk of New Zealand, but is now manager of the AngloEgyptian at Assiut. From Port Said she will continue her homeward journey. Miss Vera Mitchell (Christchurch) is leaving for New Zealand this week, by the Orcades, on a visit. For the past year she has been professor of the ’cello at the Polytechnic School of Music—a position which she greatly enjoys—and now the authorities have granted her a year’s leave. She has lately been on a holiday tour in Ireland. The Polytechnic term is only ten weeks in duration, so that the staff have many opportunities to fulfil engagements during four months of the year. Miss Mitchell has played a good deal in London and also in Lancashire, where she has had enthusiastic audiences. While in New Zealand she expects to give ’cello recitals in the chief centres, appearing first, naturally, in Christchurch, which is her native place.