Music

The muscians, who comprise the London String Quartet picked a thankless job when they determined to give, withm the crrcumscribed space of two consecutive days, all the last ten quartets of Beethoven, plus the Grand Fugue.

Last Saturday and Sunday afternoon and evening they performed thcir labor of love in the sparse ly settled precincts of Town Hall before audiences which began by being small and ended by being only too litile less small.

It is, therefore, with a frgurative obeisance that I. who was able to spend the last three of these four concerts with them, thank them now. They brought sympathy and learning and much intelligence to their series, and the important ability to leave behind their early raggedness, “botched” passages and even occasional “flatness” and improve in the course of the days-Their treatment of all the slow movements was enchanting. They added another Beethoven cycle to our collection.

Nadia Reisenberg, too has this important ability to improve in the course of the program At her Town Hall piano recital Monday, she had done works of Mozart, Bach-Go-dowsky and schumaun before she really played as her technical ability and innate musicianship indicate she ought to play. Then, with three Ravel pieces and two etudes by Stravinsky and Prokofreff, Miss Reisenberg showed where her heart was and turned in sprightly, clear-cut and truly interesting performances.

The Metropolitan Opera re-created one night last week all-or almost all-the glory which is “Die Meistersinger.” It was an inspired performance, the orchestra under Artur Bodanzky becoming for the time an eloquent instrument. and the singer-actors its countrparts.

Vladimir Horowitz, making his first recital appearance of the season in Carbegie Hall Tuesday night, marred an otherwise surpassingly brilliant and profound piauistic evening by taking four Bach chorals in their Busoni arrangement, and ap-parently unmindful of their noble content, using them merely as illustrations of what speed the Horowitz fingers can attain while dancing ober a keyboard.

Two Brooklyn boys, Bernard Kugel, violinist, and Jacob Schwartzdorf, pianist, played for the benefit of that Borough’s Music School Settlement Scholarship Fund at Town Hall last week.

Kugel had provided himself for this event with as atrocious an instrument as it has fallen to my hap less lot to hear in many months, and this had the inevitable effect of wbscuring both the piano part of Beethoven’s G major sonata (Op. 30, No.3), and the sonata itself. It was with great relief that one Saw Schwartzdorf alone advance on the piano, afterwards and play three Chopin pieces without aid.