The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 28, 1925, Page 13

t comradeshipy ~~ Eiht pubiaiion cosy eee THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE. EYERHOLD is the spirit of the revolutionary drama in Soviet Russia. He it is who has swung the theatre directly into revolutionary ac tivity, while at the same time, height- ening the artistic effects and making of the theatre a spectacle splendid as nothing has been before, rich in art, in propaganda in broad, and yet sim- ple effects. Meyerhold has spoken the last word for revolutionary drama in Moscew. His dynamic genius sweeps every- thing before it and produces a theatre that means death and oblivion to all bourgeois ideals of society and art After Meyerbold one is ne longer in- terested in or held by ordinary drama, no matter how poignant. Why? Be cause Meyerhold crushes in his over- powering dramatic and satirical scope all the bourgeois ideals of the world —that world of pelite society, of brut- al exploitation, beastly governmental diplomacy and cruel expression. Mey- erhold makes you feel the very es- sence of these things and side by side with this, he raises the Communist ideals of struggle, of sacrifices and of There is practically no scenery on the Meyerhold stage, and all the ef- fects are produced with wonderful groupings and with lights from the wings that achieve enormous and post- er-like effects. It is clear and strong and is the beginning of a new world drama. There is no reason why the nucleus of such a theatre should not be start- ed in America. There is opportunity for a theatre of this nature in this country, such a theatre working in direct contact with the party. The Workers Drama League, which produced the beautiful pantomime for the joint bazaar under the direction of Sadie Amter, may be the beginning of such a movement. Indeed, interest and enthusiasm for thie new field is so great that there is every reason to believe. that the, Workers Drama League will do great things in the future. Dr. Arkotov, who produced the “Dawn,” in Moscow, will produce a splendid spectacle, “The Paris Com- mune,” on March 15, at Madison Square Garden, for the benefit ef the Workers Party press. This will be a magnificant pageant, in which hun- dreds of comrades will take part. The fifteen thousand who will erowd Madi- son Square Garden to witness this ori- ginal production will carry away with them a picture for life, By ALFRED V. FRANKENSTEIN. GOR STRAVINSKI, the great Rus- sian composer, directed the Chica- go Symphony Orchestra in four of his own works on the regular program of last Friday and Saturday which was given at Orchestra Hall. By way of contrast with the advance. ed modernism of Stravinskl Mr. Stock opened with the Beethoven seventh symphony, crystal clear, dancing ‘music, sparkling diamond-like under Frederick Stock’s. baton, Then came Stravinski. This short, vigorous person who has upset the music of three continents with his sur- passing genius, opened his section of the program with an arrangement of what the program called “The Song of the Volga Bargemen” for wind and percussion instruments. Stravinski in- tended that this world famous tune should, in his arrangement, become the national anthem of the new Rus- sia. There is a certain amount to be said for him in this. The tune is dis- tinctly Slavic, is well known and is a song of labor. Stravinski’s arrange. ment is short and has tremendous power. But the composer overlooks the most essential point. National anthems are born out of war. The - song that carries a nation thru revo- lution will be the national song of that nation after the revolution is consum- mated. So it is that neither Stravin- ski's “Song of the Boatmen of the Volga” or Grechaniov'’s “Hymn of Free Russia” have displaced the Inter- national. Followed a fantastic scherzo written by Stravinski in 1908. This piece *rishidha os aaah ceaeh NORRATH RE ERE & rf ; ; { ike proves that Stravinski:can, if he wil! write as clear a melody, in the oid fashioned sense of the word, as Ravel or Elgar. It is light and clever music. attempting and failing to describe the activity of a bee-hive. Far be it from me to accuse Stravinski of plagiarism, but there are moments in this scherzo that are too reminiscent of Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Then a masterpiece of the fully rip- ened genius Stravinski—“Le Chant du Rossignol,” which is in English “The Song of the Nightingale.” Based on an old story of Hans Christian Ander- son this work exists in three forms, first as am opera, second as a ballet, and, in the third form played on this occasion, as a sympaonic poem. It is concerned with the story of the Chin- ese emperor who had a pet nightingale that left him cold when he got a me- chanical nightingale as a present from the Mikado of Japan. But when the emperor is sick and death sits on his pillow, the mechanical bird is broken, and the real one appears, charming death and saving the ruler’s life. It ig impossible even to attempt description of this music, The best description is the apt metaphor, the appropriate analogy. But there is no analogy to be made to “The Song of the Nightingale.” Itis unique, it is like nothing else played as music, it is only to be experienced. The program’ ended with a suite in five movements drawn from the ballet “The Fire Bird,” one of the Russian’s early creations. There is much pep and brilliancy of color in the suite, but coming as it did after “The Song of the Nightingale” it was too much of a let-down. LIONEL TERTIS, THE GREAT VIOLA PLAYER. Mr. Stock’s eighteenth Symphony program of this season, given in Or- chestra Hall last Friday and Saturday, was one of.a double significance. It four compositions making it up three were descriptive of cities. . Lionel Tertis, the great viola player, was the soloist. He presented, tor the first time in this town, two move- ments from a for viela and or- chestra by Benjamin Dale. Most of the music is le stupidity, but there are in it sp and patches of e peculiar violet red music that the viola tone seems to inspire. " The viola is the day laborer of musical instruments. No orchestra o? any size is complete without it, no string combination bigger than trio can dispense with it. Yet, with the single brilliant exception of the Ber lioz “Harold in Italy” symphony there exists scarce a ‘solo spot of importance for it. The viola works, but without the reward of a chance to stand out. out. pid Lionel Tertis is a phenomenon. He arrived on the scene as a soloist on an instrument that has only a paltry solo literature. And at once his con- temporaries began making a literature for him. The music for solo viola that is pouring out of London today is due to Lionel Tertis. It is worthy of note that the instru. ment Tertis uses is larger than the av- erage viola. It has a different tone Re ee ee ae : (sim \ ‘on, the romance and the mystery o/ London, almost the very smells of London are all brot out by a master hand. The four movements concern themselves with, first, the noise an¢ clang of heavy traffic, second the pa- thos of the Bloomsbury district in the twilight, third, the heart rending gay ety of a Saturday night in the slums, and last the Hunger March “of thos whom the city grinds and crushes, the great army of those who are cold and hungry and unable to get work.” (Quoted from Albert Coates, the Eng- lish conductor.) The windup of the program was the “Cockaigne” overture of Edward El gar. Elgar sees London as a sort o' sublimated Sunday comic supplemen in this overture, and tries hard t cover up the poverty of his ideas in masses of tone. HE civic orchestra gave its second Orchestra Hall concert of the sea- son last Sunday afternoon, with Fred- erick Stock and Eric Delamarter con- ducting. Th eprogram opened with an overture called “In Bohemia” by Hen- ry K. Hadley. This is better music on the whole than most of Hadley’s work. It is light, it is melodious, and it is not in the least Bohemian. This was followed by the fifth sym- phony of Schubert, which was given its first Chicago performance. Con- nected with this work is a history of romance of the sort generally as- sociated with some paintings. The manuscript score of the symphony was sent to Russia and lost there. Later it was discovered and just last year it was published in Vienna. But there is considerable doubt as to the authenticity of some of the ten sym- phonies of Schubert. It is thought that some of them, including the work played on this occasion, are forgeries. It certainly seems that this fifth sym- phony is not genuine Schubert, for it is in Mozartian style and so long that about two-thirds of it had to be ent to make it into 3 program at ail. -} ‘The symphony was followed by the worn old timer of vielin solos, here played by Charies V. Hrych, the con- cert master. Miss Margaret Farr was the soloist of the day, playing the Liszt. fantasia on Hungarian folk melodies. It is customary for pianists to vie with each other to see who can give this war horse the most eccentric perform- ance. Miss Farr’s interpretation was of the most eccentric. . The shadow weaving march mov ment of Chaykovski’s sixth symphony and the Strauss waltz “Wine, Wo- men and Song” wound up the show. 'HE Chicago Mendelssohn club gave its second program of the season at Orchestra Hall, last Thursday night. Because of the illness of the elub’s conductor, Harrison Wild, Cal- vin Lampert, the accompanist for this foremost of men’s choral organiza- tions, took the baton. Louise Harri- son Slade, contralto, was the soloist. The Mendelssohn club programs are built up mainly of English and Ameri- can music of many different sorts and degrees of worth. On this particular Program the outstanding composition was the one called “Siberia,” by a man named Starke. In it the song of the protesting, exhausted prisoner condemned to Siberia by a czarist court, sung by a solo voice is constant- ly circled and framed’ by Cossack cries in the chorus. Beside this solo with the club, Mrs. Slade did two groups alone, one group of songs by John Alden Carpenter, which are very bad, and another group of Louisiana Negro songs that are not quite so bad. Mrs. Slade can interpret with eonsiderable feeling and insight, but unfortunately was not in gqod voice on this occasion. Second-Hand Books An Appeal to Proletarians of the World ELLOW peasants: age and cruel descended upon the careworn, toiling A wave of sav- persecution has peasantry not only in Europe, but also in other parts of the world. The landlords and the capitalists are dealing out a bloody revenge to the best sons of the toiling peasantry for the only offense that they dared raise their voice against the oppres- sors and exploiters of the village. In Bulgaria the stalwart champions of the peasants’ cause are being mur- dered; in Rumania the peasants are being shot in their hundreds and en- tire villages are being levelled to the ground by artillery fire; in Poland the infuriated generals and landlords are threatening death to millions of peasants, shooting and imprisoning every day some of the best sons of the toiling people. Everywhere, in Czecho-Slovakia and India, in Corea, Italy and Egypt, in Peru and Canada, in America and China, everywhere the attempts of the peasants to improve their lot, to ob- tain land and human conditions of existence, are met with stubborn re- sistance on the part of landlords and capitalists, who drown such attempts in a sea of peasant’s blood. Hundreds of thousands of widows, mothers and orphans of peasants, who were either murdered or imprisoned for the cause, are left without any means of subsistence. Thus it was in Rumania, thus it hap- pened in Poland, Bulgaria, Czecho- Slovakia, Esthonia and other coun- tries. Fellow Peasants and Peasant-women: Do not trust the hypocritical “pa- cifist” twaddle of the flunkeys of the bourgeoisie and the landlords im the camp of the Second International, do not put your faith in the dope admin- istered by the priests whe are the champions of landlordism. Continue the fight for your for laud and power; dif let there “te. no peace between wolves and sheap, between landlords and peasants. The organization which renders aid and comfort to the victims of your fight against capitalism and landlordism is the International Red Aid. The industrial workers of all coun- tries, who are engaged in the same fight against capitalism and landlerd- ism as yourselves, have leng since ap- preciated the great worth of this or- ganization, which has been so help- ful to them, and they are joining it in masses. Fellow peasants: Join the ranks of International Red Aid (I. R. A.), sup- port and strengthen the only organiza- tion which renders aid to the victims of the revolutionary struggle of the peasants for land, freedom and power. I. R. A. will solace the lives of your imprisoned comrades and will plead on their behalf before the workers and peasants thruout the world. Peasants’ Council. Signed: Smirnov (U. 8 8. R.), Dombal, (Poland), Bur- sy (Germany), Vazeilles (France), Rydle (Czecho-Slovakia), Here (Sean- dinavian), Gavan (Mexico), Ken Hayachi (Japan), AlQuac (Imdo- China). FOR SALE: 40 Acre Fruit Farm into letails again. It is without doubt| | Used Communist, Labor and Eco 16 cows: chickens; new 6-room Williams’ materpicee to date, and on: | etter it languages beaune /” tpeuee; cheap. wamie ik ek ae ae and exchanged at cut prices.| Giese te Muskegon, Mich. and in his music the pathos of Lon- “Daily” Book Exchange Call Diversey 3929 or write — 304 don. the horror and hunger of Lon-| 805 James St., Pittsburgh, Pa.! Star St., Chicago, It. ?