On the whole, the workings out of this new idea in scenery is suggestive in its effect and lovely in its pictorial quality, but until the novelty wears off it obtrudes itself upon the interest that belongs rightly to the play. Its cheapness should ingratiate it to the professional producer. Naturally, the effect of one unrelieved tint in the settings of a theater of ordinary size would be deadly in its monotony, but the idea suggests of itself endless variation and improvements. After leaving The Philanderer, with its obvious limitations, with its uneven, at times amateurish acting, one cannot help wishing that our every night plays had half the thought, half the taste, half the imagination in their production that The Little Theater plays seem to have.
Samuel Kaplan.
Music
The Kneisel Quartet and Hofmannized Chopin
... And in the meantime war went on beyond the ocean. Strange, but this absurd thought accompanied me as a shrill dissonance throughout the concert. I could not help conjecturing what would be the result, if all the warriors were brought together to listen to the Kneisel Quartet: Would they not become ennobled, harmonized, pacified, humanized? Could they go on with their dull work—for modern war gives no thrills for the individual fighter—after Mozart’s Quartet in E Flat Major, which has the soothing effect of a transparent vase? They might have found Brahms’s Quintet suffering from this artist’s usual weakness—lack of sense of measure,—but the Scherzo would certainly have elated the most avowed anti-German. The four instruments performed their work so artistically that one forgot their existence and heard “just music.” The only number that could have aroused international complications was the insincere grotesque of Zoltan Kodaly, who succeeded in misusing an excellent source, Danuvian motives. “But this is Modern”, I was shrapnelled. Well, call me a conservative, but if this is modern music, then, in the name of Mozart and Beethoven, Pereat!
Still imagining a Marsian audience I was not dismayed even by the appearance of the effeminate Chopin. For Josef Hofmann took the artistic liberty of interpreting the gentle Pole in his own way, and the Scherzo in B Flat Minor sounded as a virile volcanic charge. The pianist refuses to take Chopin sentimentally, and he puts charming vigor even into the moon-beamed, tear-strewn D Flat Nocturne, even into the frail ephemeral E Minor Valse.
K.
Hofmann’s Concert
The spoiled child of the world’s pianism—Josef Hofmann—played Schumann’s A Minor piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at two concerts during the first week in November. Both performances were masterly and splendid in musical values.
Since he left his cradle, Hofmann has had the world sitting at his pianistic feet and fingers so that he has come to take the most vigorous and sincere homage as a matter of fact; and, perhaps for this reason, he occasionally fails to merit it. He is insolent to his worshippers and furious with his critics. Long and copious praise has gone to his head. His insolence is less poetic and far less handsome than Paderewski’s, and Hofmann’s playing needs to reach magnificent proportions before one is able to forget his bad-boyish disposition.