Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
TELEPHONE
NUMBER.
1745.—EIGHTEENTH
STREET.
The musical supplement to The Review is
published on the first Saturday of each month.
A SMALL army of musical performers
* * are descending on this country from
Europe. Such an immigration was never
known before. From the most modest
performer up to the leading star, they come
with the hope of carrying back a fortune
sufficient to keep them for the rest of their
lives in comfort. They expect to earn as
much here as they would during a lifetime
in any other country. How many will suc-
ceed remains to be seen. Undoubtedly
Paderewski will be the greatest conqueror
of any. All that he requires is a grand
piano and a hall. He once drew in Chicago
an audience of $13,000 by these means. In
all probability Sembrich, Jean de Reszke,
Calve and all the high-priced opera singers
will carry home with them quite as much
as they expect. Mme. Sembrich, who has
just arrived here, will remain until June
to fill concert engagements in the West.
Among her new roles at the Metropolitan
will be Mozart's "Queen of the Night" and
"Don Pasquale." The Falstaff of Nicoli
will be given in German. Both she and
Calve are to appear sixty times with the
opera company, and there is talk of a West-
ern tour after New York. There were
prima donnas enough in the country to
form a second opera company if that were
necessary. Most of them are in one way
or another, by marriage or by previous as-
sociation, connected with the opera house,
and will probably be heard there when the
doctor's certificate begins to do its work.
*
""THERE will be pianists in numbers
* among the entertainers of the coming
season—pianists of all sorts and descrip-
tions of both sexes; pianists imaginative,
individual, interpretative, descriptive,
classicists, romanticists and technicians.
First of all there will be Paderewski and
Joseffy, and then De Pachmann, Dohnan-
yi, Sieveking, Hambourg, MacDowell, Aus
der Ohe, Szumowska, Godowsky, Burmei-
ster, Bloomfield-Zeisler and perhaps Siloti.
There will be others, too, of lesser note
—veterans like Richard Hoffman and ju-
veniles like Harry Graboff, and finally
pupils, some of them promising, others
merely precocious.
Paderewski will be heard in December.
Joseffy will begin in Brooklyn on Nov. 14,
then go West, and end his season in this
city in the early part of March.
The first of these virtuosi to make his
bow to the public will be De Pachmann,
whose concerts will take place at Mendels-
sohn Hall on Oct. 17 and 21. Sieveking
was last here in 1896. Since then he has
remained more or less in seclusion, study-
ing and practising his art with enthusiasm,
and has lost the indolence which at one
time seemed likely to stunt his artistic
growth.
Hambourg has never played in America.
He is only twenty years of age, a Russian
by birth, a pupil of Leschetisky. He is a
great favorite in Vienna, Berlin, London
and Paris. Maestri, like Richter, consider
him a faithful interpreter of Beethoven.
His repertoire is full of Russian music, and
in all probability he will follow the exam-
ple of his fellow-countryman, Siloti, and
introduce compositions by Slavic compos-
ers with whom local music-lovers are ac-
quainted by name only.
JVARS. CRAIGIE, the novelist, known
' * to the reading world as John Oliver
Hobbes, has declared war on the Wagner
cult. She has written a number of es-
says recently to prove that Wagner was
not an artist, not a master, not a composer,
not a philosopher, in a word not much of
anything. We quote a sample paragraph
to show the quality of her writing:—
"Wagner was not a philosopher, he was
not genial, he did not care for humanity:
he says himself that he composed 'Tristan'
because he did not know the meaning of
love; he was an artist who learnt by ob-
servation and sensation—never through
emotion and experience. His pessimism
repulsed Schopenhauer himself, who pre-
ferred Mozart and Rossini before the
ferocious gloom of his disciple's music-
dramas. Religion—or the sentiment left
by a forsaken one—makes up the subtleties
of human thought and action—the differ-
ence between men and the beasts. Ad-
mitting that some particular man possesses
no religion and no standards of right and
wrong, he has to come, nevertheless, into
contact with those who have one or the
others. This must affect him and his des-
tiny; he cannot walk unopposed through
life. If he cannot feel the reasonableness
of the Divine law, he has to submit to its
power. This fundamental principle is not
even touched on in the Ring. It is no
more Pagan in tone than Parsifal is Chris-
tian in tone. The latter is devotional for
a theatrical work, but most theatrical as
a devotional work. We have some fine
melancholy music and some strains—which
one gladly recognizes—from the devout
masters. If it is not sensational it is still
moody, but it has much which appeals to
minds of the highest refinement and good-
ness. But the story ? It is as far from
Catholicism as it is from Malory."
*
TN view of the fact that the art treasures
*• of the Lied, or lyric song, are so little
known to the public at large, a German
named Mauke suggested in the Frankfurter
Zeitung some time ago that the Lied should
be treated in the Wagnerian manner by
having a scenic background for each song,
changing with the situation. Felix Wein-
gartner does not approve of this sugges-
tion. He thinks a good song, Schubert's
"Aufenthalt," for instance, is so beautiful
and fascinating merely from a musical
point of view, that it absorbs all our atten-
tion and would make a changing scenic
background a superfluity if not an imper-
tinence. No doubt there are modern songs
which would gain by such an arrangement,
but that is because they are not sufficiently
interesting in themselves. Herr Wein-
gartner himself, it may not be so widely
known as it ought to be, has written a
number of songs, besides his operas and
symphonic poems.
*
^THEATRICAL managers in all parts of
* the country are delighted at the pros-
pect of what promises to be a most pros-
perous season. There was little enough
to complain of last year, which was a great
improvement over the preceding season.
But it is expected that the approaching
eight months will break all records. This
agreeable anticipation is not based merely
on the condition of affairs here in New
York. Receipts in the small towns have
so far shown a distinctly higher average
than they did at this time last year. These
figures have come from places sufficiently
far apart to show that the seeming prosper-
ity was not due to merely local conditions.
It is true that the first impression of every
dramatic season is likely to be an extremely
favorable one. Persons return to the thea-
tres in the fall with great enthusiasm, if per-
formances are of a character to offer them
any reward. It takes only a few weeks
sometimes to exhaust this first annual dis-
play of interest and bring matters down to
a normal basis. Just when the outlook
has seemed most favorable there has come
a sudden reduction in the public's anxiety
to go to the theatre and the companies
begin to return somewhat disorganized
to the city. This year the indications of
prosperity seem to be unmistakable. That
New York's season will be prosperous
seems established beyond doubt. The pub-
lic has returned to the theatres with un-
usual zest and evidently found what it
wanted there. The signs are that the
opera season will again be as prosperous as
it was last year, although that was some-
thing Maurice Grau had scarcely expected.
The phenomenal receipts last winter were
taken as partly expressive of the public's
desire to hear music after a year's abstin-
ence, and it was not to be expected that
this would continue during a second year.
But subscription is as large now as it was
at this time last year and the indications
are that the tour of the company will share
in the general prosperity that is coming to
amusements outside of New York.
*
\ 1 7 H A T a source of interest it must be
^ " for the physiognomist or phrenolog-
ist to sit near enough a large orchestra so
as to study the faces and "bumps" of
the players. Orchestra players among
themselves recognize that many of their
associates are to-day what their instru-
ments have made them. There is the
greatest difference in the character and
appearance of a violinist and an oboe
player. As a class, the men who play
first violin are well stocked with self-
esteem. They all, in fact, want to be
"first." Most of them are ambitious to
be conductors, and the men who oc-
cupy the coveted outside chairs are