Music
The Kneisel Quartet and Hofmannized Chopin
Whatmore felicitous combination could be desired than this: Albert Spalding playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with the Thomas Orchestra! Twice, four thousand people were warmed to genuine enthusiasm; and at both the Friday and Saturday concerts the orchestra men (whose utterly bored manner is their usual tribute) awakened and showed the strongest appreciation for the young man’s art. Frederick Stock beamed, fatherly, while he clapped his hands.
The displayers of sophisticated conceit and blasé judgment still choose to regard Albert Spalding as a student. Their criticism, superficial as it is, might have been based upon his playing of three or more years back, when, along with the most marked talent, there was an element of the conservatoire in his work. But the pupil has disappeared, and there is now purely the artistic individual. And it follows naturally that, for these same critics, unless one draws from a violin a tone as big as a string bass, it cannot be beautiful.
For his two Chicago appearances he chose a work which is completely suited to him. Spalding can play Mendelssohn. This composer, with his happy delicacy, beauty, and rhythmic finesse, was safe in the hands of the artist. A sturdier or a more sensuous fiddler might have soiled the concerto. For Spalding is a spiritual aristocrat, a musician whose tonal excellencies are not florid, but elegant; not passionate, but of a fine intensity.
Technic?—One speaks of technic only when there is too much or too little. Albert Spalding has, at the age of twenty-six, learned the supreme art of self-expression; and both the self which he expresses and the medium he employs for it are of the first order of fine things.
Herman Schuchert.