Musical Manners.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 20, 19 May 1909, Page 60

Musical Manners.

Mme. Carreno, who visited us seme months ago, is evidently no.t only a great classic artist, but a very clever and outspoken conversationalist. The interview with her in the London. "Standard” is one of the best things of the kind we have read. She asks, for instance, why so few musicians have good manners. Perhaps the Wagner cult may have something to do with that. The manner* of that distinguished composer were, to put it mildly, not pretty. She then turns

to some of the modern “music,” and pours all the scorn upon it whieh we should expect from one steeped in th* spirit of th* great masters. She talk* of pianoforte music the difficulty of whieh is not excused by its effect, and adds very pertinently that if a young pianist is looking for difficulty he will find it in trying to play a Chopin study really well. Is it not a well-known fact; too, that, simple a* they seem, th* melodies of Mozart are among the hardest things to sing properly 1 Finally, Mme. Carreno denottneee the commercialism which is doing its best to vulgarise and degrade even the musical world of our day. “All this puffing, trumpet-blowing, and self-advertising is pitiable,” she says. And so it is. When, for instance, one cannot enter a concerthall without having the photograph of some popular performer thrust under our noses at every step, with his name underneath it, free of all prefix (as who should say “Beethoven” er “Bach”), the eharni of the place is killed straight away, however delightful the concert may prove.