Moriz Rosenthal in Word and Music: A Legacy of the Nineteenth Century

29. Review of a Concert by M. R.

29 Review of a Concert by M. R. The Times (London), May 18, 1936 Mr. Moriz Rosenthal brought to a triumphant conclusion on Saturday the series of seven historical programmes of piano music which have been in progress at Wigmore Hall during the last three weeks. They have been the most consistent feature of an otherwise desultory concert season, and not the least part of the triumph was that after six opportunities of hearing him Mr. Rosenthal could make a large audience prefer Wigmore Hall to the open air on a summery Saturday and still want more when his of¤cial programme had been completed with a brilliant performance of Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini. The series has not been carried out quite as originally planned. It was entitled “From Bach to the Twentieth Century,” but though, as has here been described, he began with Bach and Scarlatti, the “twentieth century” faded out from the¤nal programme and nobody missed it. For what really brings us to listen to Mr. Rosenthal as often as possible is the pleasure and pro¤t to be gained from hearing the music of the great masters of the piano played in the style inherited from Liszt and Tausig and enriched with his own lifelong experience. The historical character of this series allowed him to include in the penultimate programme last week specimens of those minor masters, John Field, Moscheles, Henselt, and Thalberg, rarely to be heard in the concert room to-day, but who contributed materially to the development of that great era of piano music and piano playing of which Mr. Rosenthal remains the foremost exponent. In Saturday’s programme, some of Rubinstein’s more delicate works, Three Miniatures, the Barcarolle in G, and the “Valse allemande” on a theme from Weber [Der Freischütz], were added. We could wish that a small place had been found for Sterndale Bennett, who has some right to join such a company, at any rate when it visits London.1 Mendelssohn was represented by a most lucid performance of the “Variations sérieuses”and two favourite “Songs without Words” (“The Spring Song”and “The Bees’ Wedding”). Chopin was present, not for historical reasons since a whole programme had been given to him a week earlier, but because Mr. Rosenthal loves to play him and his audience loves to hear, and there is no better reason than that. Brahms was allowed the last word, indeed several last words, for the whole of the second part was given to the Hungarian Variations (op. 21, no. 2), some of the smaller pieces, among which the Capriccio in B Minor (op. 76, no. 2) was conspicuous for its delicate staccato, and an ample selection of the Paganini Variations. To this wide ¤eld of the last century ’s music Mr. Rosenthal’s life has been devoted and he has made it his own. The twentieth century has developed other types owning different ideals. He can afford to leave them to other interpreters. ...