Music: Music’s New Friends

Much against advice of wiseacres, who said he would lose his shirt. Ira Arthur Hirschmann, music-loving vice president of Manhattan’s Saks-Fifth Avenue department store, last year founded the New Friends of Music. Its purpose: to give Manhattanites the very best in chamber music, played by the very best artists (TIME, Nov. 16). Before selling a ticket for his series of 16 Sunday concerts, Mr. Hirschmann boldly took on some $9,000 worth of contracts with artists and Town Hall. The season over, astute Friend of Music Hirschmann could grin at calamity-howlers; he was out of pocket only $400. Last Sunday, when the New Friends’ second season opened, Mr. Hirschmann’s grin was even wider. Mayor LaGuardia, District Attorney-Elect Dewey, Simeon Strunsky of the New York Times, as well as many a plain music-lover, had bought in advance every one of Town Hall’s 1,476 seats for the 16 concerts—for chamber music, a record.

As before, the New Friends’ concerts take place during the city Sunday’s quietest, most leisurely hour, from 5:30 to 7 p. m. As before, applause is frowned upon and there is no chatty intermission. Devout subscribers will hear nothing but Mozart, Schubert, Schumann. For the first time, all the music will be recorded by RCA Victor; some of it in advance. Friend of Music Hirschmann’s thesis— that chamber music is too rarely played in public, too hard to get on discs—had scored another point.

Much of the Friends of Music’s artistic excellence, and much of its almost vestal atmosphere, is the work of a dark-haired, dark-eyed pianist who took part in last Sunday’s opener—Hortense Monath, 29. In her native Newark, N. J., Hortense Monath took slight interest in piano practice until she was twelve, was not much keener about it until, on her 16th birthday, she heard Schnabel play. Then, she says, “I grew up in one day.” Schnabel, who had learned Latin from her father, took Pianist Monath as pupil, still coaches her although she made her Manhattan debut five years ago.

Pianist Monath collaborated with Ira Hirschmann from the founding of the New Friends, last week was about to become his bride. The programs which she planned for him last year bore heavily on Brahms, emphasized the evolution of Beethoven’s musical thought, showed the place of the piano in chamber music. In planning this year’s programs, Pianist Monath performed the notable feat of reading through the massive tome, Chronologisch-systematisches Verzeichnis sammtlicher Tonwerke Mozarts, by Dr. Ludwig Ritter von Kochel, who patiently numbered each & every one of Mozart’s voluminous works. She emerged with such rarities as a Mozart sonata for bassoon and cello, a quintet for piano and wind instruments, a sextet for strings and horns.