Far from the madding crickets and other fauna of Weston, Conn., where he held forth valiantly during the Summer, Nikolai Sokoloff conducted his New York Orchestra Tuesday evening at Carnegie Hall in such manner as to evoke gratitude to him for assembling so worthy an aggregation from the ranks of the unemployed-in-spite-of-themselves.
The critical ear could find fault only with the brass section of this orchestra and the relative barrenness of Philip James’s “Station WGZBX,” the “satirical suite” which received its first concert performance on this occasion, with the composer conducting. The James work suffers from an ailment of its school—the popular-turned-serious of our contemporary scene. The composer has little to say, but he says it ingeniously on the whole.
The Chausson B flat major Symphony which is so reminiscent of Debussy and Franck; the Weber “Euryanthe” overture which is still a worthy concert piece and the magnificent Strauss “Tod und Verklaerung” made up the rest of the bill. Sokoloff is a skillful conductor and his project a worthy one in the extreme.
A week ago yesterday Ruth Slenczynski amazed her auditors again with a virtuosic exhibition in Town Hall; Artur Schnabel was his eloquent self at Carnegie Hall, while Dr. Walter Damrosch brought Maria Jeritza again before a large audience at his Madison Square Garden Muscians’ Emergency Fund concert, a Johann and Richard Strauss affair.
The Grete Stueckgold who turns up all over town, and whom you couldn’t possibly avoid even if you wanted to—I don’t want to, by the way—was heard again last Sunday with the Philharmonic-Symphony. Bruno Walter accompanied her in a Wolf-Schubert group, and the orchestra under Walter provided a background for her singing and that of her husband, Gustav Schuetzendorf, in excerpt from Wolf’s “Der Corregidor”, which is never given in this country, for no good reason.
Ruth Epstein played a harp for a large audience at Town Hall Monday evening, but seemed to forget that only a tutored musical taste can abide the more technical aspects of so specialized a stratum. Her apparent lack of perspective is common to engrossed instrumentalists.
The Y.M.H.A. Symphony Orchestra, under A. W. Binder, plays today at the 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue building.
Sergei Rachmaninoff will play his own transcription of Bach’s Sonata in E major for violin at his first New York recital in Carnegie next Saturday afternoon.
Dr. Damrosch will give a concertized “Rienzi” at the Garden that night, with Frederick Jagel, Marguerite Matzenauer, Emma Redell and Lillian Clark as soloists. A host of choristers will assist the orchestra.
ELMAN ANNIVERSARY
Mischa Elman, famous violinist, this year celebrates his twenty-fifth anniversary on the concert stage. He marks the date properly by giving his first recital this season at Carnegie Hall, Monday evening, at 8:30. Many admirers of this great artist who heard him at his first recital in New York will be on hand to greet him and tender felicitations on this occasion.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
