Leonard Liebling, famed critic, has compiled a list of musical festivals which are scheduled to take place in England and on the Continent this Summer and Fall. American tourists will find no lack of orchestral and opera fare, as they scoot from place to place, greasing their way with florins, francs, crowns, lire, rentenmarks.
Here are some of the attractions which may supply them with valuable and duty-free musical memories to bring back to the U. S:
May 2-8, Strauss Festival, Vienna.
May 19-June 3, Beethoven cycle led by Dr. Karl Muck, Hamburg.
May and June, Beethoven cycle led by Walter Damrosch, Paris.
May 27-29, Music Festival, Bonn.
May 27-June 5, Smetana Festival, Prague.
May 27-June 5, International Chamber Music Society, Prague.
May 30-June 2, All-Scandinavian Students' Song Festival, Stockholm.
June 7-10, Music Festival, Sondershausen (Thuringia).
June 9-16, General German Musical Society, Frankfurt-am-Main.
June 24-28, British Music Society, Liverpool.
June, Nether-Rhenish Music Festival, Cologne.
June 21-22, Swiss Musicians' Festival, Schaffhausen.
June 22-29, Reinecke Centenary, Leipzig.
July 4-10, Händel Opera Festival, Göttingen.
July 5-7, Bach Festival, Stuttgart.
July 15-Aug. 15, Outdoor Italian Opera, Vienna.
July 20-21, Modern Chamber Music, Donaueschingen.
July 22-Aug. 22, Wagner, Bayreuth Festival Playhouse.
Aug. 2-5, Music Festival, Salzburg.
Aug. 4-9, Royal National Eisteddfod, Ponty-pool, Sauth Wales.
Sept. 7-13, Three Choirs' Festival, Hereford, England.
Oct. 29-31, Music Festival, Norwich, England.
Active Anna
A list of Dancer Pavlowa's offerings during a week at the dingy-exteriored Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan:
Snowflakes, Autumn Leaves, Pizzifcato, Warrior Dance, Flirtation, Anitra's Dance, Amarilla, Oriental Impressions, The Swan, Bacchanale, Chopiniana, Old Russian Folklore, California Poppy, Sleeping Beauty, Dances of Japan, A Hindoo Wedding, Krishna .and Rhada, Hungarian Rhapsody.
It would be difficult to discover a nation, mood, or musical composer who could find no place on a Pavlowa-program.
"Victory Ball"
A novelty in the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 22nd concert of its regular series was Ernest Schelling's tone-poem A Victory Ball. A peculiar enthusiasm for this work seems to have seized conductors this season. Pierre Monteux was one of the last to succumb. The Schelling opus is an interesting experiment, but scarcely a heaven-storming masterpiece. Based on a poem* by Alfred Noyes, which first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, it tells, in music, the tale of the return to earth of the spirits of soldiers slain in the late War. Instead of the solemn masses, purity, virtue, which they expect to find as a result of their sacrifices, they discover shameful and riotous dancing, sinful and boisterous merrymaking. The music is a fairly effective translation of this situation into sound. The mood throughout is one of gruesome hilarity. Ordinary dance-rhythms alternate with the booming of guns and the spirited tarantaras of the military bugle.
I.
The cymbals crash,
And the dancers walk.
With long white stockings
And arms of chalk,
Butterfly skirts,
And white breasts bare,
And shadows of dead men
Watching 'em there.
II.
Shadows of dead men