Fyodor Shalyapin bass
Shalyapin's second tour to Scotland was more extensive, with Glasgow and Dundee preceding a return to Edinburgh. It again proved a complete success.
As Advertised in Aberdeen
Aberdeen Press and Journal: Thursday, 11 October 1928 (p1)
International Celebrity Subscription Concerts
Jubilee Series
Founder and Sole Director, Lionel Powell, London
Caird Hall, Dundee
Thursday Next, at 8.
Only Appearance
CHALIAPINE
By arrangement with L G Sharpe
Tickets for This Concert
12/6, 10/6, /6, 5/9, 4/9.
Serial Tickets Are Still Available - Early Application is Necessary.
Paterson, Sons & Co. Ltd.
30 Reform Street, Dundee. Phone 4577.
Nottingham Journal: Saturday, 13 October 1928 (p3)
The Return of Chaliapin - Looking Forward to Provincial Tour
'Chaliapin arrived in London last night, and the first thing he did to-day was to order a piano to be sent to his suite at once. When I called to see the great Russian singer the piano was being brought into the room, but Chaliapin had not waited for its arrival. He was playing gramophone records and joining lustily in bars of the music that he particularly favours.
'''I see your papers say Russia is being offered for sale, that golden concessions are on the market,'' he said. ''It is bad, but, but I think there is a misunderstanding. Russia, my beautiful Russia, could never be sold.
'''I have been treated - how do you say - like a dog. Yes, I have lost many dear friends in Russia. I have had my property confiscated, and I have been called a White Russian because I sang at a charity for orphans of the revolution.
'''But always I shall love my Russia, always shall I want to go back. One day I shall. You will see. For thirty years I sang in Russia, for seven they have kept me out.
'''Well I remember that last occasion when I sang in Moscow, when the vast audience rose and acclaimed me, the greatest praise of all that from one's own countrymen.''
'He said he was keenly looking forward to what he called his first real provincial tour in this country. On Sunday afternoon he sings at the Albert Hall, his first afternoon concert in London, and after that he is to appear in Glasgow, Dundee, Hanley, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leicester, Cardiff, Leeds and Newcastle.
''Will you sing in English?'' I asked him.
''Absolutely yes,'' he replied. ''I began to sing in English when I was here before - of course you remember 'Drunken Miller' - and I am improving - how you say? - little by little. Then I shall precede my Russian comic songs with an explanation in English. But I am afraid the audience will find the explanation so comic that the song will sound like a tragedy.''
'As is his usual custom, Chaliapin witll not have any set programme at his provincial concerts, but he assured me that ''the Song of the Volga Boatmen'' would be included at each concert.
''On 19 October his daughter Martha is marrying in Paris David Gardiner, a young chemist who is employed by the Imperial Chemical Association. His grandfather went to Russia (to be completed).
An Aberdeen Report of the London Opening
Aberdeen Press and Journal: Monday, 15 October, 1928 (p6)
Magic of a Name - Triumph of Chaliapin's Action and Personality
'Chaliapin is a law unto himself, for although time has taken heavy toll of his voice, he is still one of the unquestioned draws. It is his personality in part, and the fact that he bolsters up his singing wth any amount of dramatic action.
'Some of his songs at the Albert Hall to-day were dull, but there were many flashes of the old-time genius of interpretation, and now and again memories of his beautiful voice brought to mind.
'''The Miller,'' with music by Dargomizkhy, was a case in point, and ''The Horn,'' a picturesque poem set by a Flégier, was another.
'Chaliapin was well served at the piano by Mr Max Rabinovitch. He is not only a fine accompanist, but an able pianist, and he provided variety by playing two groups of solos.
'Chaliapin sings in Glasgow on Tuesday, at Dundee on Thursday, and in Edinburgh on Saturday next.'
Two Dundee Reviews
Dundee Courier & Advertiser: Friday, 19 October 1928 (p3)
Chaliapine Sings in Dundee - A Superb Artist
'The famous Chaliapine sang in the Caird Hall, Dundee, last night, at the first of this season's Celebrity Concerts.
'He came with an enormous reputation, and judging by the steady crescendo of enthusiasm that his singing evoked, fully lived up to the reporta that had gone before him. He very quickly had his listeners at his feet.
'Chaliapine is surely the most prodigally gifted singer of our time. There are singers with magnificent voices, but with only modest interpretative capabilities, and there are artists of genius whose voices unfortunately fall short of greatness. Once in a very long while a singer arises whose voice and interpretative gifts are equally marvellous.
'Such a one is Feodor Chaliapine. Not only does he possess a bass of phenomenal proportions, but the artistry with which he uses it is no less astonishing. He is a born singer, and as he made us well aware many times during his recital, a born actor.
'The opera house is without a doubt the place to see and hear him at his best. Not that he appeared at all uneasy amid the more conventional surroundings of the concert hall. On the contrary, he gave the impression that he could be quite at home anywhere and under any circumstances, so natural and unassuming was his bearing. He strolled about the platform in the easiest, friendliest manner possible.
'He chose his programme as he went along from the tidy sized book which contains his repertoire (the whole history of Russian music from Glinka to Rachmaninoff may be traced in these songs), and sang for the most part in Russian. Though the language must have been unfamiliar to all but a fraction of the audience it by no means prevented the listener from forming a very definite conception of the essentials of the songs. No doubt we missed here and there some shades of meaning some subtle inflections that would delight one who had Russian, but on the whole the language difficulty was practically non-existent.
'Chaliapine's exquisitely apt and unobtrusive gestures were, time and time again, eloquence itself. How perfectly, for instance, in Glinka's ''Midnight Review'' did he illustrate with the utmost economy of movement the drum, the bugle, and the beat of the spectral leader, to say nothing of the wonderful way in which he suggested the tense, ghostly atmosphere of the song. More often than not it is sung by baritones and basses in a hearty, beefy fashion, which quite kills the supernatural quality and makes a fine song tedious.
'It was in this that Chaliapine introduced us to that beautiful half voice of his, and which he used to such ravishing effect in the soft closing phrases of Flégier's delicately sylvan ''Le Cor,'' which he sang in French.
'When he opened his voice to its fullest volume he let us see that it is still a majestic organ, though it has no doubt been even more powerful in the past.
'He has his mannerisms. What great artist has not? His singing may not always be perfectly accurate in tempo or even in notes. But, as always where genius is concerned, the end triumphantly justifies the means. If ever singer vindicated the right to be a law unto himself, that singer is Chaliapine.
'There was ''The Song of the Volga Boatmen,'' which many of the audience had been waiting for, and a gallant rather exciting excursion on Chaliapine's part into English, Coningsby Clarke's ''The Blind Ploughman'' being the song thus honoured.
'It was a long and generous programme, and gloriously sung.
Mr Max Rabinovitch played two items by Liszt and Scriabin respectively, with singing tone and a finely-drawn melodic line in the former and much brilliance of technoque in the latter.
'He was equally brilliant in two trifles by Godowsky and Moszkowsky, and was most effective in a bleak little study ''At the Convent,'' by Borodin.
''As encores he played Cyril Scott's clever essay in the exotic ''Lotus Land,'' and Mendelssohn's ''Spinning Song,'' in which he was just a trifle heavy-handed. His accompaniments were always excellent.'
Dundee Evening Telegraph: Friday, 19 October 1928 (p3)
Chaliapine in Dundee - A Wonderful Singer
'It is nothing less than a feat - an artistic feat, certainly, but nonetheless a feat - for an artist to have a large audience in the hollow of his hand while he sings in a language that not more than a dozen of them can understand. Yet this is what Chaliapine did in the Caird Hall last night, when he sang ten songs in Russian, one song in easily followed French, and one song in fairly easily followed English.
'After all, song is more than music; in it music and poetry are two arts so welded that they make a third art, and, if we cannot follow the words, we lose a good part of the song. But in spite of this, the personality of the man is so strong, and his method so dramatic, that he impresses the listener with the wonderful quality of his art, and carries them with him to the last note.
'He calls out the number of the song, the audience rustle their programmes, they have time to skim through the English words, and, when all is still again, Chaliapine signals his pianist and sings. Each song has its atmosphere, and this he communicates by a score of delicate touches, leaving it to the audience to do a bit of guesswork on their own account.
'To those accustomed to the frozen ways of the old-time singer, Chaliapine's method comes strange. He takes all the privileges of the orator in conveying his message, walking up and down the platform as he feels moved, tossing a hand in the air by way of emphasising or illustrating a point, using little motions of the body to indicate physically what action is being told in the story, and employing a very reasonable facial expression as mood flits to mood. For a moment he will rest a hand on the piano, but not for long, for his hands play their part in his wonderful performance, and sometimes his method is very nearly operatic in its use of gesture and freedom of action.
'The atmosphere of every song is permeated by the personality of the singer, who really takes the music as a vehicle, a means to convey the poetic content of the story. Music for him never seems to be an end in itself, and he never hesitates to make it bend to his needs. This came out most strongly in his rendering of Schumann's ''Two Grenadiers,'' a highly coloured piece of work, full of tense drama and powerful virility. but with strange liberties taken with the music. At other times, he cared not whether he were on the note or not, so long as he gave a dramatic rendering of a verse or incident.
'Time has nibbled a little at his glorious bass voice, which to-day - whatever it had in former years - has only some of that rolling richness and ponderous volume in it that one has heard in the basses at St Isaac's or the Kazan in pre-Revolution days. But it is a magnificent voice, with rare grades of tone colour and a large compass, and is absolutely at the command of the singer. His breath control permits him to issue forth a high note with fine crescendo.
'The art of singing is not an easy one to acquire, and Chaliapine sings a song like ''The Song of the Flea'' with so many tricky details - chuckles, sneers, scornful humour, and mock seriousness - that once more one felt that the real art is to disguise art. It looks so easy, but we know it is no easy affair to slip vocally from one colour into another, jump considerable intervals, and alter the atmosphere in such a way as to cause no jar in the process. So too in Sahnovsky's ''Death walks about me'' the atmosphere was given, and in ''The Midnight Review'' of Glinka the ghostly feeling was weird.
'His versatility came out in the range of his songs, but he was hardly successful in a true lyric. But in a comic song like ''The Miller'' he made us laugh, although we did not understand a word he said; in a Moscow Dancing Song he fairly rollicked with glee, and the ''Song of the Volfa Boatman'' he has made his own. One could well have spared the English song he sang for one of our native school worthier of us and him, and even have foregone a few Russian songs for more of the type of ''The Four Grenadiers''.
'His accompanist, Mr Max Rabinowitsch, was excellent. He and Chaliapine worked as one, and, as many of the songs had stiff independent accompaniments, and sometimes tricky illustrative matter, they demanded an accompanist who would be there all the time.
'Mr Rabinowitsch was specially slick in the illustrative parts, and supported the singer with a perfect taste and knowledge. He contributed several solos in a crisp, clean, and artistic manner, playing Liszt's ''Sonnet de Petrarcha'' with fine spirit and a Waltz of Godowsky with lilting rhythm. He gave as an encore Cyril Scott's ''Lotusland'' without a trace of its languor and Mendelssohn's ''Spring Song'' without any of its gaiety.'
An Edinburgh Notice
Scotsman: Monday, 22 October 1928 (p)
International Celebrity Concerts - Chaliapine
'Although the fame of M Chaliapine has long been world-wide, it was not until six years ago that he was heard for the first time in Edinburgh. After that initial appearance, he was not again heard in Edinburgh until Saturday afternoon, when he was the attraction at the first of the season's ''Celebrity'' concerts. Under the circumstances it was not surprising that the Usher Hall was filled to its utmost capacity. The personality of M Chaliapine is so individual and arresting that it inevitably invites discussion. There are those who dislike his introduction upon the concert platform of dramatic methods, forgetting that singing is itself essentially dramatic - the distinction between lyrical and dramatic in singing is mainly a convention - and that the good singer is necessarily something of an actor and an orator as well.
'On Saturday M Chaliapine treated his audience to singing, acting, and oratory, all fused in a perfect whole. The most abiding memory of his recital, however, was of a particularly finished vocalism. No singer, perhaps, has given such an exhibition in Edinburgh of an exquisitely-controlled mezza voce as did M Chaliapine on Saturday. The subduing of such a huge voice to such a delicate delivery, in which every note and word remained perfectly formed and distinct, was a marvel of voice production.
'This perfect control was displayed in a very particular degree in Massenet's ''Elegie.'' Following a practice which is apparently customary with him, N Chakiapine selected his songs as the recital proceeded from a list of 104 provided to the audience. From his list he selected about a dozen, and whether it was Beethoven's ''In questa tomba,'' Glinka's ''Midnight Review,''Schumann's ''Two Grenadiers,'' Kontchak's aria from Prince Igor, or pieces of sly humour such as Dargomijsky's ''Government Clerk,'' or ''The Miller,'' there was an art which was singularly complete in its response to the demands of the situation.
'M Max Rabinowitsch accompanied perfectly, and in addition played two groups of solos - Liszt's ''Sonnait del Petrarca, 104,'' and Scriabin's ''Etude Pathétique,'' and Borodin's ''At the Convent,'' Godowsky's ''Little Valse,'' and a Moszkowsky ''Etude,'' with a superb technique. His second group of solos elicited a double encore.'
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