More Fun

A lady whose husband is board chairman of a big bank is likely to lead a busy social life. But lately if any one giving a tea or bridge party telephoned Mrs. Elizabeth Rend Mitchell, wife of Board Chairman Charles Edwin Mitchell of National City Bank, a secretary was likely to reply: "Mrs. Mitchell is out of town." Or she was indisposed; or she was taking a walk. Mrs. Mitchell seemed never to be available. It was most puzzling.

The cause of Mrs. Mitchell's social inactivity became known last week, when on the program of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony concert in the Lewisohn Stadium appeared a Polonaise by Chopin-Mitchell. Mrs. Mitchell, long an amateur pianist and student of harmony, had studied orchestration under Composer Rubin Goldmark. Why not show what she could do with the work of Frederic Franc,ois Chopin, composer and friend to pretty women and romantic dowagers? Said she: "I didn't let anyone know. It was more fun than playing bridge or going to parties." For three hours a day she worked at piano and composition, presently had her score ready for Conductor Willem van Hoogstraeten. She also composed a nocturne and an Irish reel, orchestrated a Beethoven Sonata. Smart, fiftyish, she sat in the floodlighted Stadium the night of its performance, wondered how the Polonaise would sound.

Critics found it orthodox, musicianly. Her own criticism: it was "thin" in places.

Chairman of the Concerts for Children and Young People of the Philharmonic-Symphony, friend of Children's Conductor Ernest Schelling, Mrs. Mitchell insists she is strictly an amateur. She and her friends, she told newshawks last week, are trying "to make music a part of life again, the way it used to be in past centuries. But we've had to be secretive about it. The way things are, it seems a bit silly. . . ." To perform together privately every fortnight will meet Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. William Vincent Astor (pianists), Mrs. Leland Harrison (wife of the Tariff Commission's international relations division head), Mrs. Arthur Woods (wife of the resigned Director of President Hoover's Unemployment Relief) and Mrs. L. Havemeyer Butt (singers). Asked if husbands approved, Mrs. Mitchell said: "One night I had a party for Count Apponyi of Hungary. And he was telling us a beautiful anecdote about how his grandfather had heard a string quartet play one of Beethoven's compositions the first time. Beethoven was an unknown. Count Apponyi's grandfather alone had defended the piece, but do you know what the men were doing all the time the Count was telling that story? They were saying, 'Why I'd have won that $10 sure if I'd sunk that putt on the third hole!' "*

Again, Bayreuth

"Arturo Toscanini came to town via Nurnberg yesterday at half-past eight. He was greeted by Frau Winifred Wagner and at once installed in the Haus Wahnfried, where the distinguished conductor had been invited to live by Frau Wagner."

Thus, with the dignity of a court circular, did the official communique of the Bayreuth Festival last June announce the season's beginning. Rehearsals began. Was the Maestro still suffering from shock at being manhandled by Fascists in Bologna (TIME, June 22)? It seemed not. Reported the Leipzig Neueste Nachrichten: "A gray mist surrounds the 'beloved hill in Bayreuth' as the orchestral instrumentalists make their pilgrimage to this season's rehearsals . . . [Toscanini's] green auto is already standing there, and Emilio, his huge chauffeur, is playing with the diminutive fox terrier. . . . The Maestro raises his stick . . . sings with the music . . . 'Molto, molto, piu molto sforzato.' He wishes a strong, dramatic accent . . . a little cantilena [singing]. . . . Then, a small error in the oboes. . . . 'Ah, no no no, no no no, no no no no.' He goes back disconcerted. 'Bitte vierr tak-te vohhrr [in Italianate German: Please, four measures back]. . . . It is an esthetic pleasure merely to watch him. . . ."

To do honor to Siegfried Wagner, who died a year ago, a pre-Festival performance of his comic opera An allem ist Huetchen schuld (Blame It All on a Little Hat) was given in the old rococo Margrave's Opera. Came many a Wagnerite, including Conductor Wilhelm Furtwaengler and buxom Frau Wagner who with her four children carries on the dynasty.

Ex-Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria was in Bayreuth as usual last week. So was ex-Crown Princess Caecilie of Germany, Prince Wilhelm of Wied who was reigning Prince of Albania for a few months in 1914; the Grand Duke of Hesse and a scattering of Russian, Greek and German nobility and ex-nobility. The weather was bad. Toscanini had his old rheumatism again. Many tickets had been cancelled; prices for room & board were reduced. The Festspielhaus restaurant had been "very tastefully decorated." Then enough people bought tickets at the last minute to fill the house, the weather cleared, and once more Tannhaeuser was the first day's opera. Familiar was the cast: fat Lauritz Melchior sang the title role; Soprano Maria Muller of the Metropolitan Opera was an able Elizabeth, but (said a U. S. correspondent) "her impersonation wanted in true virginal tenderness and womanliness." The Venusberg scene did not represent "frenzied eroticism" but "revue calisthenics." Venus (Contralto Anni Helm) was "tender, but in a maternal way." Nevertheless the audience was enthusiastic, applauded (mostly for Toscanini) a full ten minutes.

Next day's Parsifal was orchestrally poignant, lyric. Slower than most was Toscanini's tender reading. A magnificent Gurnemanz (Basso Ivar Andresen of the Metropolitan), a poetic Parsifal (Tenor Fritz Wolff), a comely but vocally insecure Kundry (Soprano Elisabeth Ohms), sang their way through Wagner's leisurely, sometimes philosophically turbid drama. The sets "dated from 1882 and looked it."

*Some husbands who themselves compose or play: Manhattan's Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker ("Will You Love Me In December As You Do In May?"); Board Chairman Charles Michael Schwab of Bethlehem Steel Corp. (violin, organ) ; Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes ("Melody in A Major"); President William Hartman Woodin of American Car & Foundry ("Raggedy Ann's Sunny Songs"); Professor Albert Einstein (violin). Banker James Paul Warburg (pseudonym, Paul James) writes lyrics to the jazz tunes of his wife, Kay Swift, whose "Fine & Dandy" was a Broadway smash hit last autumn.

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