I found this excellent review of Charles Villiers Stanford's Irish Symphony in Richard Aldrich, Concert Life in New York 1902–1923. Little comment needs to be added save to point out that Walter Damrosch was born in Breslau in 1862 and died in New York in 1950. He was a composer of a wide variety of music, however it is in his capacity as conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra that we are concerned here. Rudolph Ganz (1877-1972) was a Swiss pianist, conductor and composer. He claimed direct descent from Charlemagne. A note on Edward German's; fine Welsh Rhapsody is also included.
'Nov. 18 1907 Mr. Damrosch is giving a special
character to each of his Sunday afternoon programs played by the New York
Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. Last week he made a Dvorak program. Yesterday
he had one that was mentioned as a memorial to Grieg but might better have been
called an exposition of "nationalism" in music. Grieg himself was a
conspicuous exponent of that idea; his piano concerto that Mr. Rudolph Ganz
played suggests the Norwegian coloring more than the Peer Gynt suite, which is devoted to other purposes, the
illustration of action upon the stage. With these two compositions were
consorted two others, an Irishman, Sir Charles Stanford's Irish Symphony, and a
Welshman, Mr. Edward German's Welsh Rhapsody.
Of this music
Stanford's is the most interesting and a welcome addition to program lists that
are apt to become stereotyped. It still retains its freshness and spirit—not that it is very old in years, but music is the least
immortal of artistic productions, and some modern symphonies have wrinkled with
age in fifteen years. It is not great music nor wholly original in style, but
it is charming, of sustained interest and made with much dexterity and skill in
the manipulation of its material. The skill it shows would be challenged most
easily, perhaps, upon the point that Sir Charles does not always quite know when
to stop and that at least the first three movements are extended considerably
beyond the point where his material yields him profitable results. That
material consists of Irish folk-songs and themes strongly influenced by their
spirit, both melodically and in the ancient "model" harmonies that
are implied as their basis. Irish music affords an ample variety of mood for a
composer so familiar with them as Stanford to work in, and it has been truly
said that he has done more with this material in an artistic form than any one
else. The tendency to prolixity is shown in his lingering fondness for the
tender second theme of his first movement, which he can hardly let go, and
again in the brilliant jiglike scherzo—very taking till it is prolonged to the
point of monotony. The third has a rhapsodic character, as of an Irish lament;
the harp of Erin is heard, there are flutings of plaintive fantasy, and the
song, Lament of the sons of Usnach appears in it. In the last movement he also
employs actual folk tunes, Remember the glories of Brian the Brave and Let Erin
remember the days of old. These are skillfully used as real thematic material
for symphonic development, not as in a potpourri of national airs, and in this
the composer has shown a fine skill and a truly musical feeling. He writes
skillfully, often charmingly, for orchestra.
Mr. German, who
came from England to produce his new operetta, Tom Jones, conducted his Welsh Rhapsody. Mr. German also speaks with
native authority when he is concerned with the Welsh national utterance. His
rhapsody is a less highly organized development of national tunes than Stanford's
symphony; his treatment is more obvious. He has founded the four sections of
his work on five tunes, of which the last is the well-known March of the men of
Harlech. There is good work in it and some stirring passages; and it is a
composition well worth hearing. Mr. German conducted it with firmness and
skill. Mr. Ganz's playing of Grieg's concerto was strong and virile rather than
deeply poetical; it was emotionally rather self-contained. There was beauty in
the slow movement and a clear incisiveness in the first. This composition does
more honor to Grieg's memory than the inevitable Peer Gynt suite, which had been played from the same stage on the
two preceding days by the Philharmonic Society.'
Richard Aldrich, Concert Life in New York 1902–1923,
ed. by Harold Johnson (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1941),
193–194.
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