Still Does

Last week when Efrem Zimbalist appeared in Manhattan for the first time in two years, he played some of his own work, a G Minor sonata for violin and piano, a suite by Joseph Achron. Then he played the Glazunov Concerto in A Minor.

Made mindful of the past by this loud and lovely music, learned listeners recalled that it had been played in Manhattan for the first time 17 years ago. And that the violinist 17 years ago had been Zimbalist, then making his debut and playing the concerto as he still does more beautifully than any one else has ever played it.

Hungry

Conductor Walter Damrosch reported returns last week from his radio concerts for school children. Fully 1,000 letters a day have come in, "show that this country is really hungry for fine music. And not only the children, but the grown people. The older people who are listening in to my programs are a charming and delightful offshoot which I did not contemplate. Their letters show that the mothers and grandmothers, and in some cases the fathers and grandfathers listened in at home while their children heard the concert at school. Altogether it looks as though this might grow into a gigantic awakening on the part of the Nation to music."

Artless

Remembering Schubert Week (Nov. 18-25), Editor Henry Louis Mencken himself wrote a Schubert tribute for his American Mercury, said in summary:

"Dead a hundred years, he remains in his peculiarly exhilarating and lovely way the greatest of them all. No composer of the first rank has failed to surpass him in this way or that, but he stands above all of them as a contriver of sheer beauty, as a maker of music in the purest sense. There is no more smell of the lamp in his work than there is in the lyrics of Shakespeare. It is infinitely artless and spontaneous. But in its artlessness there is no sign of that intellectual poverty which so often shows itself, for example, in Haydn. Few composers, not even Beethoven and Bach, have been so seldom banal. He can be repetitious and even tedious, but it seems a sheer impossibility for him to be obvious or hollow. Such defects get into works of art when the composer's lust to create is unaccompanied by a sufficiency of sound and charming ideas. But Schubert never lacked charming ideas. Within the limits of his interests and curiosities he hatched more good ideas in his thirty-one years than all the rest of mankind has hatched since the beginning of time."

Notes

In Berlin, one Maurice Eisenberg, U. S. 'cellist, played a program of French composers, won enviable notice.

In Manhattan. Soprano Gertrude Kappel, famed for her Wagner, hurried in a taxi toward the Waldorf-Astoria where she was to sing for 1,000 clubwomen. Clubwomen waited but Singer Kappel's cab had crashed into another, she had been thrown from the seat, jounced on the floor. Thirty-five minutes later she entered the Waldorf ballroom. Bruised, she sang.

Fannie Anitua, portly Mexican contralto, sang sonorously but not too smoothly at her first Manhattan concert last week. Mexican colors draped a box. Mexican officials attended, especially urged by President Plutarco Elias Calles. Mexican songs won loudest approval.

Syracuse Morning Musical officers pondered last week a program to be given by one Herbert Heyner. Baritone Heyner wanted to change his last number to Peter Warlock's Good Ale. Good ale, the good ladies decided, was good for England where it might have a certain historic value, scarcely appropriate for Syracuse.

The Victor Talking Machine Co. sent experts last week to Boston to install recording instruments in Symphony Hall whereby favorite numbers of the complete Koussevitzky Orchestra* will be preserved.

In Cincinnati, before Withrow students, 8-year-old Laddie Gray played accompaniments for his violinist-mother, Estelle Gray-Lhevinne. Little Laddie was dressed as the boy Mozart, with white wig, white satin coat, red velvet breeches.

At the Metropolitan Opera House every-one knows Black Carl Johnson. For 24 years he has been at the side entrance, opening carriage and automobile doors, shooing in debutantes, dowagers, diplomats. He has been proud head of ten doormen, the one to open doors for Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson. At intervals he has ben a vaudeville magician, manager of a Negro road show. Recently, by day, he has been a messenger for a brokerage firm; by night, always alert, always friendly, at the Metropolitan's marquee. With regret opera subscribers heard last week that he has suffered a severe nervous collapse, from overwork.

* Other great orchestras recorded by Victor: the Philadelphia, London, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Berlin State Opera.