100 YEAR AGO IN MUSICAL AMERICA (430)
December 10, 1921
Page 33
Cleveland Reaches Full Musical Growth
Nikolai Sokoloff and Ernest Bloch Are Dominant Factors in City’s Art Development—Heavy Subscription List Indicates Wide Interest in Orchestra—Institute of Music Makes Strides—New Quartet by Bloch Is Feature of Recent Chamber Music
CLEVELAND, Dec. 2. —With the music season in full swing and an average of six or seven concerts a week, Cleveland may be said to have reached almost its full growth as a great music center.
The primary factor in the situation is the symphony orchestra under the direction of Nikolai Sokoloff, whose radiant enthusiasm and sterling musicianship carry all before him. The ninety skilled players are working in absolute harmony with the conductor, carrying on strenuous daily rehearsals. Its growing fame and popularity will carry the orchestra upon tours to the East and West during the current season, and the schedule of concerts will reach well over the hundred mark.
Five concerts have already been given in Cleveland, and among the great works performed have been the Fifth and Eighth symphonies of Beethoven, the Cesar Franck Symphony, the Fourth by Tchaikovsky, and the Second by Brahms. These were given remarkably fine performances and were received with the greatest enthusiasm by audiences that filed the big Masonic Hall, composed almost entirely of season ticket subscribers.
Notable solo performances at symphonic pairs have been given by Edward Johnson, John Powell, Marguerite D’Alvarez, and Efrem Zimbalist, the latter heard in the Beethoven Concerto for Violin, for which Mr. Sokoloff furnished an accompaniment of extraordinary beauty. Concerts on alternate Sunday afternoons, the "Sunday Pops,” have audiences that crowd the house, and from which 100 or 200 persons are turned away each time. The programs include always one or two symphonic movements, and choice numbers in lighter vein from classical and modern composers. There is usually a soloist of local prominence. Beryl Rubinstein, of the piano department in the Institute of Music, achieved marked success at the second Sunday concert in the Liszt Concerto No. 1.
The Work of Ernest Bloch
Another dominant factor in musical development here is Ernest Bloch, director of the Cleveland Institute of Music and a musician whose originality both as a composer and as a pedagogue makes his school stand out with ever-increasing prominence.
The enrolment of the newly established Institute, whose doors were opened for the first time just a year ago, has greatly increased in the past three months. Institute methods are not only thorough from a musical point of view, and in accord with the most modern ideas in music instruction, but the association of the skilled instructors of the faculty with so constructive a genius as Ernest Bloch broadens the mental horizon of all, and these facts are being widely appreciated.
Twice each month Mr. Bloch conducts a musical symposium or informal lecture course attended by a large group of the city’s music lovers upon the general topic “Music Explained by a Musician,” special subjects being the various musical forms, the Motif, the Musical Sentence, the Song-Form, Londo Form, Fugue, Sonata, Text and Music, etc. From a fund of great knowledge, long and varied experience, intimate personal recollections of the brightest lights of the musical world, and with a never failing sense of humor, Mr. Bloch presents to his listeners a running commentary upon all phases of musical art in conjunction with the consideration of the special subject in hand.
Faculty concerts given once a month bring-programs of brilliant ensemble numbers and solos of great interest by Andre de Ribeaunierre, violinist; Beryl Rubinstein, pianist; Hubert Linscott, baritone, and others.
Progress in Chamber Music Chamber
Chamber Music has a strong hold upon the music lovers of Cleveland. The Chamber Music Society, managed by Mrs. Franklyn B. Sanders, and sponsored by a group of about forty guarantors, has promoted thus far four concerts, two in private homes, and two, open to the public, in the Ballroom of Hotel Statler. At the first public concert the London String Quartet was heard; at the second the newly organized Cleveland String Quartet whose players are men at the head of their sections in the orchestra—Louis Edlin, Carlton Cooley, Samuel Lifschey, and Victor de Gomez played. Balance of parts, sympathy in interpretation, and rare tonal texture distinguish the work of the latter quartet. The players are all young men, earnest students, and gifted musicians. Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Piano was presented at the first private concert by Samuel Lifschey and Beryl Rubinstein. At the first public concert his Quartet for Strings formed the second half of the program, following the Mozart Quartet in D. The extremely modern idiom of Mr. Bloch, the sombre, even melancholy tincture of his thought, which is of decided Hebraic cast, makes for a certain forbidding quality at a first hearing. But the work was previously given a private performance at the residence of Victor Sincere and the second hearing revealed the fact that here is not only the work of a great composer, but of a man of deep and searching thought. An exquisite Pastorale, used as a third movement, brought relief from the pervading gloom of the other movements.
Excellent recitals fill the remaining evenings of busy weeks. G. Bernandi brings a constant succession of artists from the Metropolitan and Chicago Opera Companies. Mrs. Sanders, for the Fortnightly Musical Club, brings admirable recitalists for evening and afternoon performances. The Cleveland String Quartet announces a series of “Chamber Music Pops” in the small auditorium of the College Club. John McCormack and Galli-Curci fill Masonic Hall to overflowing and return engagements are announced.—ALICE BRADLEY.