Sept. 27.
The revived animation which comes with autumn's approach is nowhere more pleasantly shown than in the announcements of entertainers of all sorts coming from, abroad, Theatrical companies are not so plentiful as once they were, Costs of trans~ port are great, Shanghai has a dislike for advanced the result, and it is to be feared we have rather got a bad name. But in the number and quality of musicians who visit us we are fortunate indeed. 'To-night another. Miss Cecilia Hansen, is opening at the Town Hall' and byvall accounts she is to be counted among the kings and queens of the violin, Wherever she has played, in America, in Manila, to the highly critical audiences of the Dutch East Indies, to the French of Saigon, a nation, be it said with all respect, not too ready to bestow piaise.on artists of other countries, Miss Hansen seems to have taken her listeners by Of mixed Russian and ili descent she was a classmate with Jascha Heifetz at the Petrograd Conservatoire under that great teacher Professor Auer. Violinists used to speak of the "Auer tone"; but now they call it the "ITansen tone", 0 peculiarly pure and powerful it is. At an ea Miss Hansen was gathering in prizes with both hands; then came Bolshevism and, like other dealers in lovely and innocent things, she had to flee from Russia, escaping with great difficulty rough Finland, The world, it has become her country ig the richer for it. She is said to be exceedingly beautiful, and her pictures bear out the: report. A great violinist too? Could any combination be more fortunate?
Among her programmes one foresees many favourities—Menidelssohn's Concerto, the Grieg Sonata in C minor, Bach for' violin alone and Cyril Scott that rare and elf-like visionary. That one has heard them all before, suggests only the greater pleasure in hearing what Miss Ha sen will do with them, It is a curious fact, witness to the many-sidedness of a truly great work of art, that the best musicians can take the sane piece of music, and without -noticeable difference of time or emphasis, can all make it seem a different thing. It is only the second class who contort themselves in efforts force their composer to yield up some novelty, and only do him wrong by their deliberate eccentricities. To the leaders it all comes naturally enough "after what flourish their nature will." From visits of recent years one begins to acquire a store of wonderful memories.
Who that heard him can forget Kreisler's playing of the Kreutzer? Like the Zulus whose: greatest honour for a departed hero is never to pronounce his name, one almost feels that one must never hear the Kreutzer played again,—Zimbalist, that pure and lofty player, is special ly associated with the Mendelssohn we are to hear to-night.
Heifetz's name brings instant memories of that astounding piece of music, Bach's Chaconné 'Thibaud and' the Saint-S:
Concerto are interchangeable terms. Mischa Elman one recalls, apart from the peculiar hynotie quality of his musie, chiefly by "The Blue Lagoon, piece which in any other hands might have sounded trash, but in his becanie a vision of all the glories of southern seas. What will Miss Hansen leave us for! lour libraries?
'A Hongkong writer describes her as beginning her recitals with a sort of fury of impatiens a3 if her spirit had to burst its way out of material surroundings before it could achieve the heights of undisturbed express sion. One thinks of Balzac roar. ing and groaning in the travail of artistic creation.
But one does not gath t there is like violence in Mi laying. The days when musicians must split the ears of the groundlings, and pianists were actually known to. crack strings, are gone, praised be, What the creative art to-day is worth, it will be for the future to say, but in its masters of interpretation we may believe that no age was ever happier than ours. Hard things are often said about. conservatoires, now abounding in every country, and they certainly bring much di appointment to hundreds of little goslings, once seen by proud parents as future swans. But the conservatoires have this to: their credit, that they have raised the general standard of performance so high that, in order to attain the highest jo musician must be very, very }good indeed, And of no instrument is this truer than of the violin, the most exacting of all because it constitutes the simplest, most direct form of communication between player and]; listener, unencumbered by mechanical devices. Mere tachi que, delightful as it is, means little or noth hundred other violinists can cly as much in that way. The impressive polyphenol effects of the piano: which often enthrall one, even from a moderate performe impossible for violin. Unless the player can enter into the composer's mind and truly convey what he finds there to his' audience, he is as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. "And T new such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, T cannot tell: God knoweth;) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." Of such are the great interpreters of music,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.