Royal Road to Critics

Out of the smoke that was the Schubert Centennial there took shape one definite, perhaps permanent, project which showed itself last week for the first time under the name of the Schubert Memorial, Inc. On the notion that Schubert lived his life unrecognized, that today many talented young U. S. musicians are threatened with the same plight, it organized for the purpose of establishing a contact between them and "the representative musical public." Baldly, its plan is to sponsor debuts, dress them glamorously that many and important listeners will be attracted, including--and it was severely stressed--leading critics whose verdicts supposedly are to be of inestimable value to the worthy young debutants.

Last week in Manhattan the Schubert Memorial gave its first concert, presented Violinist Sadah Shuchari, 20 (onetime Sadie Schwartz) and Pianist Muriel Kerr, 17, both pupils of the Juilliard Foundation. External circumstances favored them. They had 80 members of the Philharmonic-Symphony to play with, Willem Mengelberg to conduct, Prof. John Erskine (also of the Juilliard school) to introduce them. They had many and important listeners, including leading critics. They had marked talent, both of them--but for Brahms' violin concerto, for Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto it was not enough. Nor did the leading critics appear to remember their assigned roles. Said Lawrence Gilman in the Herald Tribune: "Miss Shuchari gave a creditable conservatory performance, flawed by occasional impurity of intonation, poor tone quality, inaccurate double-stopping, and an infelicitous delivery of the finale, which she played awkwardly, timidly, and insecurely. . . . Miss Kerr's pretty and facile playing was swamped in the tides of Rachmaninoff's grandiloquence." Pitts Sanborn wrote in the Telegram of the Brahms as "nothing for a young miss in flounces to toy with."