REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



'March 



1913. 



MUSIC AND ART. 



A WIZARD OF TONE. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF RUBINSTEIN. 

 An interesting picture of Rubinstein 

 is presented to us by Lillian Nichia in 

 the December number of Harper. 



TOLSTOY AND BEETHOVEN. 

 Her recollections of the pianist take 

 us back to the 'eighties, when Rubinstein 

 gave a recital at Dublin. The writer 

 was then a very young girl, but she was 

 enthralled by his playing, and then and 

 there a fixed determination to leave her 

 home took possession of her. It was 

 not till she was fifteen, however, that she 

 was allowed to study music at Frank- 

 furt, and after a little time under Biilow 

 she started for St. Petersburg to take 

 lessons from Rubinstein. During her 

 sojourn there she gathered the materials 

 for her life of Rubinstein, the 

 first biography of him to be pub- 

 lished. Among the Deople who 

 gathered round Rubinstein, were not 

 onl\- distinguished musicians, but 

 painters, sculptors, writers, poets, etc. 

 On one occasion Count Tolstoy graced 

 the dinner-table, and Rubinstein told 

 him he had altogether missed the mean- 

 ing of Beethoven's " Kreutzer Sonata." 

 around which he had woven his tale. 

 Tolstoy's reply was, " No matter ; one 

 piece of music or another, I have written 

 a romance." " True," retorted Rubin- 

 stein hotly, " but no matter how great 

 you may be in your own line, it doesn't 

 give you the right to distort the work 

 of another artist." 



TEACHER AND PIANIST. 

 Rubinstein was Director of the Con- 

 servatoire, and as teacher he was a mar- 

 tinet. The writer has seen him in rages 

 that were absolutely diabolical. He had 

 a horror of " canned " pianists, or 

 " machines." The great axiom of his 

 teaching was, " Play as you feel ; but 

 feel right." " Do not imitate anyone," 

 he would sav ; "play as you under- 

 stand provided you do no violence 

 thereby to the conception of the com- 

 poser." Speaking of his playing, the 

 writer says : — 



No one who has ever heard Rubinstein can 

 forget the magic beauty of that wonderful touch. 



He could draw from the pianoforte the inmost 

 soul of its sweetness and poetry, summoning at 

 will powers either celestial or demoniac, for in 

 the whole gamut of human emotions there was 

 none over which, as a performer, he had not 

 absolute and infinite control. Truly a wizard of 

 tone; all the wild abandon of grief and joy, the 

 fierce utterances of hate and scorn, the groans 

 of despair, the exaltation of love, the airy whisper 

 of romance, the charm and witchery of coquetry 

 — all these he could mirror in exquisite per- 

 fection. 



OPERA— PAST AND FUTURE. 



Marvellous are the things we suffer 

 on the operatic stage, writes Mr. Gerald 

 Cumberland in the Musical Times for 

 December. His article is a plea for the 

 treatment of modern subjects in place 

 of the intricate love affairs of a group 

 of Italian villagers, or of the Queen of 

 Sheba, or of some mad women of 

 ancient Greece. 



PLEA FOR MODERN SUBJECTS. 



Why is the atmosphere of the opera 

 house largely the atmosphere of the 

 halfpenny novelette? The explanation 

 is, in the writer's opinion, that most 

 music-lovers regard opera either with 

 genial tolerance, or with half-conscious 

 contempt. At any rate, they do not look 

 upon it as a serious form of art. But 

 why is opera not taken seriously ? Be- 

 cause it is not serious ; it trifles with the 

 public. Our contemporarx' stage recog- 

 nises that fine and stimulating drama 

 ma}' be made out of other material than 

 love, hate, and jealousy. A host of 

 playwrights have given us plays which 

 touch life at many points, and why 

 should not the same thing be done on 

 the stage of the opera house? Mr. Cum- 

 berland pleads for the selection of 

 modern heroic subjects for operatic 

 treatment. Men without imagination 

 may see no beauty or chivalry in con- 

 temporary life, but to the man with the 

 seeing eve there is romance in a thou- 

 sand things. The imagination of the 

 true man is fed not only by the contem- 

 plation of the scroll of history, but by 

 every event of his own time. He is 

 stimulated into action by the deeds of 

 those who are living and most of all by 

 the generous emotions within his own 



