MUSIC NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1481, 12 September 1918, Page 27

MUSIC NOTES.

(By

“G” String.)

The programmes for the coming tour of the famous French soprano, Mdlle. Antonia Dolores, are said to be framed on lines which have long been followed by this gracious singer. One sees very old songs therein, and Alpine peaks of operatic or oratorio, and songs of the French school, and 'finally a selection of modern English congs. Mdlle. Dolores is at present touring Queensland with great success, and will be in New Zealand in a few weeks’ time. The annual choral and orchestral concert of the Brisbane Austral Choir was given in the Exhibition Concert Hall on September 28. This choir has made it a rule since the commencement of the war to give a big concert each year in aid of some patriotic fund, and this year it was devoted to that most deserving organisation, the Red Cross Society. The concert recently given was an unusually attractive one for several reasons. This year is the centenary of the birth of the great French composer Gounod and the choir hit upon the happy idea of celebrating the occasion by producing one of his works, “The Redemption.” It is stated that Siegfried Wagner has composed another opera. How many he has composed altogether is not clear, but all seem to have been failures. Some years ago he protested against being taken musically as his father’s son. His music, he said, was assumed to be an offshoot of that of the creator of “Tristan and Isolde ” and found wanting. Thereupon the critics took it as in no way related to the great Richard, but found it just as faulty. Yet no composer appears to have begun his career with so many things to help him as Siegfried Wagner had. He was given a fine general education, and, apart from the instruction he received from two famous masters, must have had assistance from his brother —the greatest musical mind of his time —that most people would consider priceless. Moreover, he was left a large fortune, and an opera house at Bayreuth that had already the traditional readings of the Wagnerian school, laid down by Wagner himself. But Richard Wagner could not transmit the genius he possessed in such an astounding degree to his son, or, if his son had any. it needed perhaps steeling through the fire — the bitter struggle of self-denial which seems as necessary to great achievement as genius itself. Seigfried Wagner’s latest essay is a compound. entitled “It is all Puck’s Fault,” of three dozen fairy tales a la Grimm. The music is said to oe a copy of Humperderick in his “Hansel and Gretel.” One writer says: “It is spoiled by over-scoring, which is just what one would have expected.”