Rosenthal, the Wit

Equipped with, among other things, a mustache in no wise cropped short after the fashion of the day, but flowing in the largeness of the decade before last, Moriz Rosenthal played his first recital in New York. For half of a normal lifetime he has stood as a symbol of all-around pianistic mastery. And in his recital he displayed the prodigious technique that has become a tradition of him and he displayed as well an imposingly architectural interpretation of Liszt and Beethoven. But Rosenthal enjoys a distinction other than purely musical, that of a wit.

"He has a most acidulous gift of jibes and satire," said Arthur Bodanzky of the Metropolitan Opera House and the Friends of Music the other day. "No person, no moment is safe from his railleries. But everybody knows that it is Rosenthal, whose uncontrollable vice is sharp pointed jocularity. And nobody minds. A violinist played a sonata by Erich Korngold, whose father, the most important music critic in Vienna, is rather remarked for pushing his son's musical fortunes. Afterward a friend of the violinist said to him: 'Why did you play that sonata? It is bad. It isn't even grateful.'

" 'The sonata isn't grateful, but the father is,' loudly commented Rosenthal who was standing nearby."

Rosenthal, by way of keeping up his jocose reputation, had challenged Vladimir de Pachmann (TIME, Sept. 10) to a pianistic duel. Whether this will consist of seeing who can run an octave with the greatest speed by the stopwatch or whether they will throw pianos at each other has not been determined. In any case, however, Rosenthal insists that the rules be such that if de Pachmann makes any of his famous remarks during the combat there shall be counted a foul.