CARNEGIE HALL Those Were the Days... CAP) is organized. It is "expected by its founders to become the most powerful 50 YEARS AGO organization in the world for the control of the music business." Feb. 16: Eugene Ysaye forfeits a $2,000 During February 1914 Germany's Ad­ contract to play a concert during a miral von Tirpitz rejected a proposal for Beethoven festival with the New York a year's moratorium on naval shipbuild­ Symphony Society because he insists on ing suggested by England’s First Lord of including a Vivaldi concerto as well as the the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Else­ Beethoven. Sayi conductor Walter Dam- where on the Continent, a dentist (in rosch: "It would be ridiculous to play Montmartre) advertised his new rates: anything except Beethoven's music at a regular tooth extraction, 60^; painless, Beethoven festival.” §1.00; with music, $4.00, for which the patient could choose "Beethoven, Wagner, Feb. 18: Ysaÿe and his son Gabriel play or Irving of Berlin.” In the United States, the Bach Double Concerto at a Society of Koussevitzky as Haydn. the Aero Club laid plans for a one-day the Friends of Music concert at the Ritz. flight across the Atlantic to be undertaken Feb. 20: Mr. and Mrs. David Mannes, cians wearing wigs and frock coats play by a plane capable of cruising at 65 mph, violinist and pianist, are among those per­ the Farewell Symphony by candlelight at while a special state commission investi­ forming at a White House musicale given a benefit concert in Carnegie Hall. gating conditions in the New York con­ by Mrs. Wilson. Walter Gieseking’s performance of Rach­ fectionary business recommended that the maninoff’s Third Piano Concerto (with working week for fourteen-year-olds be re­ Feb. 22: In an interview, Dr. Karl Muck, the Philharmonic under John Barbirolli) duced from fifty-four hours to forty­ conductor of the Boston Symphony Or­ is judged by one critic as “even more sig­ eight. Also, on . chestra, states that “musical composition nificant than a performance of the work, is in a state of stagnation everywhere. Feb. 4: Enrico Caruso, rushing to the which is well remembered, by its com­ Max Reger is a prolific composer who poser.” cabin door in Act II of Girl of the Golden writes easily and too much. Schoen­ West, falls to the floor when his spurs be­ berg is impossible.” Feb. Il: An NBC Symphony broadcast come entangled in Emmy Destinn’s skirts. features a superlative performance of "Mme. Destinn, absorbed in her part, did Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes: at one of not at first notice what was wrong with the pianos is Erich Leinsdorf. Nadia her colleague.” 25 YEARS AGO Boulanger is "amazing” as conductor, Feb. 6: William Butler Yeats, arriving on pianist, organist, and choral director with the Lusitania, is asked his opinion of the the Philharmonic. recent banning of Maurice Maeterlinck’s In February 1939 Hitler launched the Feb. 19: Ignace Jan Paderewski is re­ works by the Catholic Church. He de­ 35,000-ton battleship Bismarck and also fused in his offer to return to Poland, clares that he sees no heresy in Pelleas opened the Motor Show in Berlin, intro­ after a fifteen-year self-imposed exile, to and Melisande or The Blue Bird. ducing a new lightweight automobile he help organize the country’s defenses in hoped would become a successful export case of German aggression. Feb. 8: A Sunday Times photograph re­ product. It was called the Volksauto. veals Mme. Olive Fremstad hoisting a France opened her borders to the Loyalist Feb. 18: Isaac Stern, making his second large ax. “She, like the Kaiser, enjoys army fleeing Spain, while England or­ appearance in New York, is judged woodchopping, which is her chief recrea­ dered 1,200,000 babies’ gas masks. Mean­ "among the best of the newest crop of tion.” while, on . home-bred violinists.” Feb. 10: The Kneisel Quartet, perform­ Feb. 1: Robert Casadesus, on his fifth Feb. 25: Nineteen-year-old violinist ing Opus 127 in Aeolian Hall, is praised consecutive U.S. tour, plays a concert of Ruggiero Ricci makes a "comeback" at for bringing Beethoven’s late quartets "out Romantic music at Carnegie Hall and is Carnegie Hall. from the arcana of hidden and mystical deemed "a superior artist with a distin­ things for the enjoyment and comprehen­ guished musical mind.” Feb. 26: A broadcast from NBC Studio sion of educated music lovers.” 8-H by the seventy-eight-year-old Pade­ Feb. 2: Georges Enesco, as guest con­ rewski, commencing his twentieth U.S. Feb. 11: Thomas A. Edison is persuaded ductor, leads the New York Philharmonic tour, is termed “one of the most impres­ by his wife and son to leave his labora­ at Carnegie Hall in a program of Ru­ sive musical events this city has seen in tory in West Orange, New Jersey, to come manian works. many years.” . The Orchestra of the home for a surprise party celebrating his New Friends of Music, under Fritz Stie- Feb. 5: The Griller Quartet, ten years sixty-seven th birthday. His favorite music dry, gives the first of a series of perform­ old, makes its American debut at Town "was rendered on one of the new diamond ances of little-known Haydn symphonies Hall. Its "youthful vigor and enthusiasm disc phonographs, and in this way the exhumed and edited by musicologist Al­ evening at home was spent.” worked with irresistible effect.” fred Einstein, recently arrived in this Feb. 13: The American Society for Feb. 9: Serge Koussevitzky dressed as country. First to be played are No. 67 and Composers, Authors, and Publishers (AS- Haydn and the Boston Symphony musi- No. 80. 2 Carnegie Hall Program ‘What is an -Achromatic ^peaker ^ystem? -CARNEGIE HALL- RPORATION Board of Trustees Leonard Altman Marian Anderson Robert S. Benjamin T. Roland Berner W60—2 speaker system. $116.50 Julius Bloom Dr. Ralph J. Bunche chromatic means: "Pure sound, uncol- Howard S. Cullman A- ored by extraneous modulations.” Such Jack deSimone modulations, common even in luxury Robert W. Dowling speaker systems, tend to alter the natural Mrs. Marshall Field sound of music. Abe Fortas The concept behind the Wharfedale Achro­ Dr. Harry D. Gideonse matic speaker systems reflects extensive mu­ Mrs. Dorothy Hirshon sical training and respect for musical values. Mrs. Albert D. Lasker In turn, the warm loyalty of Wharfedale Hon. MacNeil Mitchell owners is derived from their personal reac­ Dr. Rosemary Park tions to the musical taste in the Wharfedale Frederick W. Richmond sound. Like a fine painting, the ability of Wharfedale speakers to evoke personal Col. Harold Riegelman emotions is an art. Raymond S. Rubinow John Barry Ryan III Here is the truly natural reproduction of sound, free of spurious resonance and arti­ Isaac Stern ficial tonal coloration. To appreciate this Geraldine Stutz achievement, listen to a recording you know Harry Van Arsdale and enjoy, reproduced by a Wharfedale Gerald F. Warburg speaker system. There are Norman K. Winston Wharfedale Achromatic David L. Yunich speaker systems priced from Chairman of the Board Frederick W. Richmond Chairman, Executive Comm. Robert W. Dowling President Issac Stern Executive Vice President John Barry Ryan III Vice Presidents Marian Anderson Harry Van Arsdale Gerald F. Warburg Treasurer Robert S. Benjamin Secretary Raymond S. Rubinow Counsel Nordlinger, Riegelman, Benetar and Charney Executive Director Julius Bloom General Manager Lionel Rudko Controller Ronald J. Geraghty House Manager John J. Totten Asst. House Manager Wayne Richardson Booking Manager Mrs. Ioana Satescu Box Office Treasurer Nathan Posnick Carnegie Hall Program 3 Letter from Budapest By Joseph Szigeti In October of last year Joseph Szigeti returned to his ence of some eight or nine hundred; my recording native Budapest, for the first time since World War II, of the Bach D minor Partita was played after I had to serve as a judge for the seventh International Music touched upon various stylistic and technical problems. Competition, held in that city. The editors of THE Koddly and his wife sat in the first row, and when CARNEGIE HALL PROGRAM take pleasure in he got up to thank me and to reminisce about me (he publishing herewith a letter from the renowned has known me since my tenth year), I got a glimpse of violinist describing his impressions of the visit. Koddly the educator at work. He used this occasion to point out that some of the musical anomalies I castigated spring from a lack of solfeggio training ■p erhaps you have read about the results of the com- among string players, and Koddly—practically shaking petition, meager if one considers that over a hun­ his forefinger at the assembled teachers—said: “The dred contestants took part. In any event, the things I time will come when even violin teachers will come intend writing about are on the margin of the com­ around to solfeggio!” This was an evident dig at the petition. routine pedagogy and routine music making in gen­ Coming back to one’s birthplace after twenty-four eral which he has been combating these last decades. years, it is difficult not to fall into the trap of senti­ The dominant impression he leaves is that of serenity mentality. Everything conspires to make you do just in the knowledge of work well done; counterbalancing this, even the food you eat, the wine or the morella this is an alertness far removed from a “resting on cherry juice you drink. And to hear Koddly reminisc­ one’s laurels” attitude. ing about the blond ten-year-old I was or about a Koddly had just returned with his young wife from simple Schubert sonatina he heard me play some thirty years ago, or to have the poet-philosopher Milan Fust tell me about the violin lessons he had from my father sixty years ago—all this is not conducive to the writing of a level-headed report.