The World of Music News

Abroad June 1913

FERRUCCIO Busoni who has been living for many years in Berlin, has decided to move to London.

NEXT year the Lamoureux Orchestra of Paris is to make a tour of Germany and Austria under the direction of Camile Chavillard.

FRANCIS Korbay, the well known Hungarian musician, died recently. He resided in London for many years up to the time of his death.

IT is said that Chaminade uses a player piano at her recitals of her own songs and pieces. If true, this is certainly a novel development.

THE public subscription for a monument to Verdi which is being made in Italy has received as a starter $6,000, from a Mrs. McCormick of Chicago.

THE statue to be erected at Busseto, Italy, the birthplace of Verdi, in memory of the great composer will be two and a half times life size. Similar statues are to be erected at Parma and Milan.

A NEW work by Sir Edward Elgar is to be performed at the Leeds Festival next October. It is to be a symphonic poem entitled Falstaff. This is his first entry into the field of the symphonic poem.

THERE is a story going abroad that Massenet's ghost has been attending the rehearsals of the master's last opera, Panurge, at the Gaite Lyrique, Paris. How do these press agents think of such things?

A YIDDISH comic opera entitled The Candy Kid - obviously imported from America - is being performed at the Pavilion Theatre in the East End of London. At the same theater, Faust and The Barber of Seville have also been presented in the same dialect.

THE baton used by Wagner at the first Ring performance at Bayreuth is in the possession of Adolf Wilhelmj, a London violinist and teacher, and a son of the late violin virtuoso, August Wilhelmj. The baton was broken in half by Wagner in disgust after the performance.

IT is reported that Paderewski is going to compose a violin concerto for Fritz Kreisler. In the meantime Kreisler made a success with the new Elgar concerto in St. Petersburg, but nevertheless there is still room for another concerto to take rank with the Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Tschaikowsky and Bruch concertos.

CLIFTON Bingham, the writer of many popular ballads, died recently in England. His best known song poems were doubtless Love's Old Sweet Song, The Dear Home Land and In Old Madrid. Nobody could hail Bingham as a poet, but he satisfied the English taste for sentimental ballads which, if a little mawkish, are sincere enough in their way.

A FRENCH composer named Erik Satie has gone one better than Richard Strauss. Strauss has given us a musical picture of a day from his own life in his Sinfonia Domestica, but Satie provides a set of three pieces representing three scenes from the life of his pet dog.

"ONE of the worst slum districts in Manchester", says Musical America, "boasts of a chorus of mil girls that has won several prizes at the competitive festivals so popular in northern England. Three years ago this choir visited Switzerland and gave some concerts there, and now it is arranged that the visit shall be repeated there next August. The chorus numbers 150 girls, but only 30 will be taken to Switzerland, where the tour will last about a fortnight and include concerts in Lucerne and Zurich.

THE well known singer, pianist, composer and teacher, Francis Alexander Korbay, died recently in London. He was the son of distinguished parents, and was born at Budapesth, 1846. He studied singing and piano under various distinguished teachers, among whom was his godfather, Franz Liszt. A temporary failure of his voice caused him to take up the piano with some success. He spent some years as a singer, teacher, pianist and lecturer in this country, but eventually went to London, where for many years he had been teacher of singing at the Royal Academy of Music. His arrangements of some Hungarian songs in English have been very popular in England.

A FEW years ago the musical world was startled by the name of a new musical instrument - a name which spluttered like a Nihilist bomb. Then we learned that the Balalaika was really a very old Russian peasant instrument. W. W. Andreeff, a real genius, saw the possibilities of the instrument and twenty-five hears ago organized a Balalaika band. Once of his organizations recently toured America and never have we heard more delicate nuance or a finder perception of rhythm. Now they are celebrating M. Andreeff's twenty-fifth anniversary in St. Petersburg, and thousands of his admirers all over the world are sending him congratulations. He deserves them all for reviving the national instruments of Russia.

DEBUSSY recently performed his new Preludes at a concert in Paris. Fanny Davies, the English pianist, was in the audience and gave the following account of his playing to the London Daily Telegraph. "He played three of his new Preludes deliciously, all perfectly simple, in strict but never stiff rhythm, always flowing but never forced. His touch is beautiful, very sonorous in pianissimo passages - it creates an atmosphere of calm serenity and absence of all fuss - his tempi are most moderate; in fact, he strictly followed his own directions in each case. He has that hineinlegen in the soft chords that Frau Schumann always wanted, which carries the chords into the air".

HANS Richter, the veteran Wagnerian conductor, who was for many years conductor of the Halle Orchestra n Manchester, England, conductor of Covent Garden Opera, and of the Bayreuth Festivals, etc., must be a very modest man. He was said to be writing his memoirs, but has now decided not to publish them, but will leave copious notes of his experiences in the possession of his family after his death. At one time he did considerable composing, but eventually gave it up. He tells us of this circumstance in the following words: "I have conscientiously as a musician examined my works, and by the side of Richard Wagner I came to the conclusion that, though I might become a distinguished director, I should never become a distinguished composer. On the day when I recognized this fact, I burned all I had hitherto composed, and solemnly vowed never to recommence. This vow I have strictly kept".

The Etude Magazine June 1913