Siegfried

The newest and perhaps greatest musical notability who will visit the U. S. during the present season will be Siegfried Wagner, son of the great Richard. He comes on a concert tour. The proceeds will be devoted to the rehabilitation of Baireuth* Wagnerian Festivals devoted to the ceremonious and supposedly ideal performance of his father's works. A great deal of legendary glory surrounds Siegfried. He is, to begin with, the offspring of a famed romance. Richard Wagner, then entering the full flame of his success, broke with his first wife, Minna, who had shared the bitter bread of his early obscurity and poverty, became enamored of the wife of his great friend and supporter, the renowned conductor Hans von Buelow. She was the daughter of the great pianist and composer Franz Liszt. A strange and rather fearsome complication ensued. Von Buelow magnanimously renounced his wife and their several children to his former friend. After an interval Richard and Cosima were married, and the fruit of their union was the present Siegfried. It was to commemorate the birth of this son that Wagner wrote his most blithesome work, Siegfried, the third of the Ring tetralogy. On the morning after the child was born, he gathered a band of musicians in his house, surprised and awakened his wife with the sound of the beautiful Siegfried Idyll, which he had arranged from the music of the opera. The Siegfried Idyll remains one of the favorite concert pieces. Siegfried Wagner grew to manhood steeped in the Wagnerian tradition, devoted himself to music, to composition and orchestra conducting. He has written several operas, none of which has made any great popular or artistic success. He is said to be a good orchestra conductor, but has never achieved much glory. He remains the "son of Wagner" and, by inheritance, wears the Wagnerian tradition. He is said to have tried his hand at politics, to have taken some part (see Page 11) in the present Royalist movement in Germany, but here too he gained no great prominence. His mother, Cosima, remains in Ger- many, dreaming over her memories, and striving, like her son, to revivify the Wagnerian Festivals of Baireuth, which were ruined by the War. These festivals were instituted with enormous efforts by Wagner himself, and were the living embodiment of the strange worship that attended him in his later years. They became a cult, a rite of adoration. Readers of the Nietzsche-Wagner correspondence will recall that the philosopher, for a long time the devoted friend of Wagner, broke away from his idol in large part because he was repelled by the adulation and the molasses of flattery that Wagner accepted and enjoyed from the host of sentimentalists at Baireuth.

Wagner died in Venice, and there ensued that fantastic nocturnal carrying of his body by Italian enthusiasts. After his death, the Baireuth Festivals continued and pilgrims from all over the world flocked to them yearly. Their purpose was to perform the Wagnerian works with the utmost perfection, and in complete accordance with the usages that Wagner had laid down with great detail. Whether in the later years of their flourishing they were the best Wagnerian performances in the world may be greatly doubted.

But Cosima Wagner and her son have devoted themselves to the restoration of the Baireuth Festivals, and that is why Siegfried Wagner is coming to America. He will be welcomed and aided by a committee of notables, such men as Otto H. Kahn and Clarence H. Mackay. His tour will be pushed energetically. He was to have conducted a performance of his own opera, Der Barenhauter, with the Wagnerian Opera Company, but the bankruptcy of the company has canceled this. He is scheduled to conduct programs with the principal orchestras in the country-- in New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco. One Hand

Few greater disabilities can be imagined than that of the loss of an arm to a pianist. Yet recent death notices contain the name of an old Hungarian, aged 75, famed as a pianist despite the loss of his right arm. Count Geza Zichy was a boy of 14 when maiming came to him in a hunting accident, yet with extraordinary courage and perseverance he schooled his remaining arm to do the work of two. He achieved such mastery that he gained the admiration of Liszt, who proclaimed him a phenomenon, accepted him as his pupil.

The one-armed pianist began his concert career in 1880, with a program arranged by himself for one hand. He had a success that established him as one of the musical personalities of Hungary. He became President of the Royal Academy of Music at Buda Pesth and of the National Conservatory. He was in addition a lawyer, but continued his one-handed virtuosoship of the piano until his recent death.

Prodigy

Europe has been thrilled by the gifts of Nino Rota Rinaldi, aged eleven, of Milan, who caused a sensation last month at Tourcoing, France, by conducting a performance of an oratorio written by himself. The work, The Childhood of St. John, was produced by a chorus and orchestra of 250 persons. Both the boy's composition and his conducting were pronounced excellent.

And now another infant has arisen. Pietro Mazzini, son of an Italian publicist and of the singer, Carla Benassi, is a pianist. The other day he played a program. "Nothing short of marvelous," said a French critic. This lad is only five.

The value of prodigies seems much in doubt. Endless numbers of them, with genius in infancy, have come to mediocrity in maturity. On the other hand, many of the world's finest artists have been infant prodigies, witness Josef Hofmann, at the piano, Mozart in composition.

*Baireuth is a town of Bavaria where Wagner conducted many of his own operas. Both Wagner and Liszt are buried there.