She asked me a great many questions about my singing. Suddenly she said,
"Make a trill for me."
I looked about for a piano to give me a note to start on. But a piano was evidently the thing where the Goldschmidts had drawn the line. I made as good a trill as I could without one.
"Very good!" said she, nodding her head approvingly. "I learned my trill this way." And she made a trill for me, accentuating the upper note.
Pointing her finger at me, she said, "You try it."
I tried it. Unless one has learned to trill so it is very difficult to do; but I managed it somehow.
Then she said, in her abrupt way, "What vocalizes do you sing?"
I replied that I had arranged Chopin's waltz in five flats as a vocalize.
"In the original key?" she asked. "I know it well. It is one of
Goldschmidt's favorite concert pieces."
"Not in the original key. I have transposed it two notes lower, and put some sort of words to it. I also sing as a vocalize the first sixteen bars of the overture of Mendelssohn's 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'"
"I don't think that I could do that," she said.