Music:
JAMES, HIBBARD
MUSIC By Hibbard James Three Recent Books About Music At first glance, I was perfectly sure that an entire book devoted to a discussion of the abilities, foibles and fancies of various pianists...
...An entirely different type of book, equally worth your attention, is Ernest Newman's From the World of Music (Coward-McCann, $5...
...Anyone who would like to pursue the matter further will find very interesting material on Mozart and his conception of opera in George R. Marek's recently published The World Treasury of Grand Opera (Harper, $6.95), which contains all manner of curious and interesting information about grand opera from its beginnings in 18th-century Italy to the present...
...He is at his best when he is writing about the abilities and intentions of various composers (always excepting a rather too high-flown opinion of the art of Fredrick Delius...
...Chasins, because he has (when he relaxes) the insight and the ability to communicate that can suddenly give new meaning to an artist or a piece of music...
...He has heard a great deal of music and has written about it with rare perception...
...MUSIC By Hibbard James Three Recent Books About Music At first glance, I was perfectly sure that an entire book devoted to a discussion of the abilities, foibles and fancies of various pianists would be rather heavy going...
...In spite of this, I am grateful to Mr...
...The book includes a fascinating imaginary dialogue between Mozart and Da Ponte, written by a contemporary who also wrote one of the earliest important biographies of Mozart...
...The very range of choice makes the book perfect for dipping into from time to time...
...Some of his remarks on style, in which he urges a careful study of the composer and his intentions (as expressed not only in marginal notations on the score but also in his writings and statements), are most illuminating and deserve the close attention of the music-going public, many performers and even a few critics...
...As he points out: "Most of the companionable people, the likeable rascals, the jolly topers, the artful dodgers, are basses or baritones...
...Quite a bit of what Mr...
...I imagine that few people other than professional pianists would find it possible to pick flaws in what he has to say about such masters as Hofmann (who was one of Chasins's teachers), Rachmaninoff, Gieseking or Serkin...
...Chasins writes is in the vein of "first steps for little feet," as though he were not aware that there may be a few other people who have some knowledge of the field or that certain things are not so much matters of fact as of taste and opinion...
...Although I have not yet seen this new production, I have seen and heard enough Mozart performances to readily believe that he is being done in something less than life size, in what Mr...
...Marek has assembled his selections with taste and intelligence...
...Mozart was considered a great virtuoso as well as a great composer by his contemporaries, and in a number of instances he expressed himself as delighted with a particular performance because the violins had played extra loud...
...Many performers and conductors who should know better persist in regarding Mozart's style as one best characterized by such words as tinkling and miniature, in spite of the many available letters from Mozart in which he takes a diametrically opposed view...
...I particularly enjoyed his remarks on opera and opera singers, which are designed to give aid and comfort to basses and contraltos...
...They range from the important Wagner conversation to such an amusing triviality as an exchange of correspondence between Verdi and an opera-lover demanding a refund for his tickets to the first performance of Aida...
...Chasins characterizes as the Dresden-china style...
...Yet, even so, there is something seriously amiss in his approach...
...Trilling says, it would appear that the misconception has spread to the Metropolitan...
...As a baritone myself, I find this a comforting thought with which to start the new year...
...at other times, he proclaimed his special pleasure in the dramatic effects that he was able to get on the (at that time) new pianoforte...
...In this connection, some of the remarks of Diana Trilling made two weeks ago about the current production of Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan are to the point...
...The faults lie in the realms of snobbery and pedantry...
...A distinguished critic and author of the definitive biography of Wagner, Newman has been music critic of the London Times since the turn of the century...
...Nevertheless, there are still performers who insist on a muted effect in Mozart...
...Marek's Treasury also contains many revealing sections in which the composers speak about their own work...
...and, from what Mrs...
...To my considerable surprise, Abram Chasins has proved me thoroughly wrong in his book Speaking of Pianists (Knopf, $4...
...Chasins, himself once a concert pianist and now music director of New York's radio station WQXR, writes from what is obviously considerable knowledge...
...The most unusual is a conversation between Wagner and Rossini (transcribed by the journalist who brought them together) in which Wagner explains his musical intentions, gaining a rather cautious acquiescence from Rossini...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 6
