MUSIC NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1144, 14 March 1912, Page 18

MUSIC NOTES.

(By

“G String.”)

Miss Rosina Buckmann, who recently appeared in Wellington and Auckland with the Irish tenor, Air John Al’Cormack, returns to Alelbourne shortly to create the leading part in a new opera by Prof. Alarshall Hall. Miss Buckmann projects giving a concert in Wellington before she leaves. It ought to be well attended. Air John McCormack and Miss Marie. Narelle were due to give concerts in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 27th, and Sunday Alarch 3rd. .Mendelssohn would probably be astonished could he hear his music, sung in thousands of churches at Christmas time to the words, “Hark? The Herald Angels Sing,” for before the music was adapted to the words he himself wrote of it: —“I am sure that piece will be liked very much by singers and hearers, but it will never do to sacred words.”

During 1911 the park bands of London gave 1254 performances at a cost, to the London County Council of just over £12,000. Mr Neil Forsyth, the manager of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden declares that hardly one English opera produced during twenty-one years has brought in enough money to repay its cost of production, and accuses England of a lack of musical curiosity. Mr H. N. Southwell and Air John Lemmone have evidently much faith in Good Friday concert business in Sydney as they have secured the Town Hall for April sth. The rent for the one night is the tidy sum of £lll. Air Edward Sykes put in a tender for a paltry £lOO 5s and Mr Gehde put one in for £95 ss. The tender for Easter Monday night is £27 10s, which seems paltry alongside £lll for Good Friday night. Alessrs. Southwell and Lemmone were again the successful tenderers. The Vienna Society of Alusic Lovers has offered .a prize of £4OO for a large choral work for its centenary festival in December, 1912.

Leipzic, the stronghold of German conservatism, never was proud of its native son, Richard Wagner, till after his death. If he gave a concert of his own music there the hall was nearly always empty, and the critics tore everything into a thousand shreds. For decades his music was tabooed by the Gewandhans, the leading orchestra in the city.