Music: Festival

It is not often that you see motor after motor full of fine ladies and smart gentlemen rolling up in front of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. But last week you saw them. It continued for three days. One day they rolled up twice.

If you followed these unusual visitors, you soon found out that they had not come to borrow books from the U. S. A. They passed to an inner court of the great building and entered, through a door cut through the library walls, a chaste little temple of white marble that has been completed for something over a year. They removed their wraps, settled themselves in comfortable, well-spaced seats and listened, not to a Senatorial diatribe, but to some of the purest chamber music that is to be heard anywhere in the world. It was music under the auspices of the Librarian of Congress and his musical assistants; and thus actually under the auspices of the U. S. It was the second of an annual festival begun last year. The name of the festival, however, is not “All-American” or “Bigger and Better Music Week,” as one might suspect, but the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Festival, so-called for accuracy’s sake after the extraordinary lady who built the marble temple, provided for its maintenance, inveigled Congress into accepting it as a gift to the nation, and who personally arranges the programs, invites the artists and pays them.

Conductor Ernest Bloch came all the way from San Francisco to lead a picked handful of men with strings through Bach’s steamy and impetuous “Brandenburg” concerto in G. Some of the temperament of this first performance extended, unhappily, into their execution of the next item, Mozart’s lunar “Serenata Notturna,” but was in place again for Mr. Bloch’s own sombre, splendid composition, “Concerto Grosso.”

The next morning’s gathering heard Mrs. Coolidge’s latest European importation, the fiery Pro Arte Quartet of Brussels—”young lions of the conservatoire,” one and all. With much gusto two of these attacked a most modern sonata, compounded of unconvincing fifths, dissonances and Debussyesque decoration, with which Albert Huybrechts, young Belgian, had won the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Prize for 1926.* Compositions by. other Belgians—rich, sensuous Cesar Franck and trickier Joseph Jongen, little-known chief of the Brussels Conservatory. The afternoon was devoted to Russians, with the Stringwood Ensemble of New York at the desks. Many a 100% Congressman might have glowered had he known that the group of Russian peasant songs sung by Baritone Boris Saslavsky was arranged by one A. F. Goedike at the express command of the Soviet Government.

The closing program was entrusted to the faultless Flonzaley Quartet, who played Haydn, Balmer, Schumann.

To have established chamber music within earshot of the very lobbies of Congress and actually under federal patronage was a feat for no ordinary woman. Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge of Pittsfield. Mass., and Washington is certainly unique. Discerning travelers along the road from bustling Pittsfield to smart Lenox, Mass., cannot have failed to learn that the considerable eminence known as South Mountain, by which they must pass, is mostly Mrs. Coolidge’s property; that the spacious house on its summit is hers. The smaller white stone building on the mountain’s slope is where, seven years ago, she housed the Festival Quartet of South Mountain, when she determined, out of an insatiable craving and a comfortable pocketbook, to have chamber music and have it in a proper setting. Her benefactions to music were already many. There are prizes of her giving from coast to coast. She gave Yale University a concert hall in memory of her soldier son. But the South Mountain Festival was such a perfect and personal thing that none save her invited guests might enjoy it. There were seats for 500 but no ticket sale.

Then she was moved to insure the permanency of her creation by making the nation responsible for it. To generosity ($100,000 and $28,200 per annum) she had to add ingenuity, but she achieved her end. Now—for expense is no object—Europe is combed at her behest, native genius is more than ever encouraged and at least one art flourishes at the political but not the artistic U. S. capital.

Mrs. Coolidge, whose ancestors were New Englanders but were not closely related to the family now represented in the White House, is daughter of the late O. S. A. Sprague, wealthy Chicago wholesale grocer (Sprague. Warner & Co.), sister of Col. Albert A. Sprague, 1924 Democratic candidate for U. S. Senator from Illinois. Inhabitants of Pittsfield and environs tell anecdotes of her troublesome deafness and marvel that her interest in music is so intense, little knowing that an ear unsensitive to hurly-burly street sounds and flat conversational tones is the more sensitive to nuance in musical vibrations.

Notes

In Philadelphia. A great crowd flocked to the Academy of Music one afternoon last week for the opening concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra. “Buzz-buzz-buzz. . .” Well-bred greetings were hushed only when the stage darkened and two swift shafts of light shot out from either wing to frame the pale, curled head of Conductor Leopold Stokowski. Up went his hand and beauty floated, spread itself over the dusky hall—the orchestral season had begun. Mozart came first, an early overture long buried away in the library of the Paris Conservatoire, charming, tuneful, immature; “Pan,” a rhapsody by U. S. composer William Schroeder, difficult, cleverly constructed, tedious; Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” brilliant, biting; Beethoven’s “Seventh Symphony,” great feat of the afternoon, magnificently played.

In Boston. Symphonophiles, little ones, big ones, long-nosed ones, pug-nosed ones, found their places in Symphony Hall, arranged themselves, sat, as well mannered as could be, until Conductor Sergei Koussevitzky appeared. Then they exploded, rose in their places, beat their gloved palms together, would not behave until their idol had bent himself into a dozen bows. The overture from Der Freischutz opened the program. Then came two Debussy nocturnes, “Clouds” and “Festivals,” beautifully read, Prokofiev’s suite from the ballet Chout, new to Boston, rhythmical, gay; Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, dramatic, majestic.

Great Ones

Gatti-Casazza. In awful majesty from his swivel chair ‘ throne, Impresario Guilio Gatti-Casazza of the Metropolitan Opera Company, received newspapermen one day last week. A “handout” informed them that he had chosen La, Vestale to open the opera season on Nov. 1, with Rosa Ponselle heading the cast; that Tosca with Jeritza would open the Metropolitan season in Philadelphia on Nov. 2; Lucia the same night in Brooklyn with Marion Talley. Asked if there would be a special performance for Queen Marie of Rumania, Signer Gatti said: “Any performance at the Metropolitan Opera House is good enough for any queen.”

Jeritza. In Vienna last week Maria Jeritza was preparing to leave for the U. S., heard a tooting and shouting outside her house, went to the window and was serenaded by several hundred admirers, led by the University band. Pleased, she flung them flowers.

Garden. In Paris, Mary Garden, pale, unreal, sang a farewell Pelleas and Melisande at the Opera Comique, won a big ovation from Americans visiting there, from Parisians who recalled that it was she who had created the leading role in April, 1902, that other members of the cast had been in that same first performance.

Strauss. For more than a year officials of the Vienna Staatsoper have striven to persuade Richard Strauss to come back to the fold. Last week they announced he would return this year, conduct 20 performances opening with the local premiere of his opera Intermezzo.

Inventory

Laymen know little of the concert business, of the mechanism behind the booking of favorite artists at convenient times and places. Last week Arthur Judson, manager of the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras, of such famed individuals as Sophie Braslau, Sigrid Onegin, Efrem Zimbalist, took an account of stock, reported that at the demand of the people retail music merchants are buying more and more music where they used to buy names; that thanks to the increasing interest clubs are taking in music and to the development of music courses, especially in the Middle West, medium-priced artists are getting steady engagements; that tables have turned in regard to the radio, that now, instead of as an interference, it is being looked on as a profitable advertising scheme; that according to his books music sells itself in the following ratio throughout the U. S.: 25% for the East, 5% for the Pacific Coast, 25% for the South, 45% for the Middle West.

Grin

A square, squat lady with snow white hair stepped on to the platform of the High School auditorium in Stevens Point, Wis., one evening last week and grinned a great wide grin to show that she was at home. She was Ernestine Schumann Heink, 65 years old, in Stevens Point for the first concert of her Golden Jubilee Tour.

“Why Stevens Point?” some one had asked her. “Surely to begin a fiftieth anniversary tour—?” “Vy not?” Ernestine Schumann Hemk had answered. Should she go back to Europe, to Gratz where she had given her first formal concert at the age of fifteen? Should she go back to the little Austrian town where she grew up, the homely, hard-working child of a Bohemian soldier and an Italian mother? To be sure she had earned her first money there playing dance tunes on a tinkly piano in an old restaurant where the peasants gathered on holidays. Ninety-six cents, she had made in just one evening. That, and the seven and a half cents she earned giving the restaurant keeper’s daughter lessons, she put toward a piano for herself, nol much of a piano with its hammers patched with string and sealing wax, but still a piano. . . . Sh might have gone back to Dresden where she first sang in opera, to Hamburg, where Herr Heink had died and left her alone with five small children, to scrub and cook, to sing for five dollars a performance. Yes, Hamburg had its memories, but then so had Vienna and Berlin and Bayreuth. So had cities all over the U. S.

It was 1899 when she came to the Metropolitan Opera to sing for $75 a week. More children, Herr Schumann’s, were added to Herr Heink’s*string. At the Metropolitan she was at home, but there were the children. . . . She went into musical comedy. They lifted their hands in horror at the Metropolitan but they took her back when she was ready to come because no one else could sing Wagner as she could. She left the Metropolitan again, went touring the country in concert, into towns much smaller than Stevens Point, into army camps, schools, hospitals, East, North, South, West. No entourage traveling with her, no maid even, no road manager. Just Schumann Heink, taking an upper when she could not get a lower, hater of temperament, lover of her children, lover of soldiers the world over, of corn’ beef and cabbage . . . shrewd . . . generous. . . .

“Vy not Stevens Point?” It is all the same. Everywhere she is at home. She holds the keys to numberless cities. There will be 70 concerts in all, nine in Wisconsin, then to Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, D. C., Maryland, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, Missouri, a few performances at the Metropolitan sandwiched in. No entourage, not even a maid; just Schumann Heink grinning a great wide grin to show she is at home.

*Formerly every year, now every other year, this prize is awarded for deserving new compositions. In the odd years an order is given to some proven composer for a new creation.

*Mme. Schumann Heink has had eight children (six are living), five of them Herr Heink’s, three Herr Schumann’s; three of them daughters, five sons. Four sons fought in the U. S. army; the other, a German officer, was killed in the War.