Messrs. Steinway & Sons,

New York.

Gentlemen:

many

The supreme qualities of your instruments have been for years universally recognized. Public and individuals, amateurs and artists have been looking upon your pianos as upon a standard of perfection. Whenever perfection is attained progress is stopped, for there is no room for climbing when the summit has been reached. And yet, in your case, this law of nature seems to have been defied.

Having played Steinway pianos, after a long interval, in many concerts, during a season of unusually sudden and unfavorable climatic and atmospheric changes, I feel obliged to declare, and I do it most emphatically, that you have realized an astonishing progress. To the former qualities, now magnified, intensified, you have added an entirely new one, a quality which has been considered unimportant, superfluous, almost incompatible with the character of tone: an easy, light, surprisingly agreeable action.

In former years I had to select my pianos before every tour; I used to go repeatedly to 14th Street to try most carefully the instruments, and my choice invariably fell upon those two or three which were considered of the best ones by the makers themselves. This time it was quite different. Before beginning my tour I went only once to Steinway's warehouse; I tried an amazingly large quantity of instruments, dozens of concert grands, and I could not make a choice; I could not select the few best ones because all were best. Is there anything which could demonstrate more convincingly the wealth of resources of your firm, the astonishing vitality of your house? But there is in it something to rejoice the heart of everyone who is devoted to his profession. Young men inherit fame and fortune, general respect and universal recognition most legitimately acquired by the genius, industry and honest, persistent labor of their illustrious forefathers. Instead of simply enjoying life, instead of dwelling passively upon the golden ancestral laurels, they concentrate in noble, ambitious efforts all their energy and up they go to a higher plane and, indeed, they reach still higher regions.

Such a thing can only be accomplished by a sincere love of profession, and it is to this love of profession that I wish to pay my tribute of high esteem and admiration.

New York, May 4, 1914.

Most faithfully yours,

I. J. PADEREWSKI.

A highly artistic fac-simile of the above letter in Mr. Paderewski's own handwriting, with a most excellent portrait of the great artist, will be mailed upon request. Steinway & Sons, Steinway Hall, 107-109 East 14th Street, New York.

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SYMPHONY HALL-Seventeenth public preeminence, when many similar organrehearsal of the Boston Symphonychizations, with ever growing financia! tra, Karl Mcartonducto March 12. The program: Beethoven, an- and artistic resources are in the field dante from seventh symphony (in memoriam John Chipman Gray); Berlioz, "Har- against it. If the programs are someold in Italy symphony (Mr. Ferir, solo times strangely made, it is a felicitous viola); D'Indy, fantasia for oboe and or condition of affairs that they are just chestra, op. 31 (Mr. Longy, soloist); Brahms, "Academic" overture. what the conductor finds it convenient or advantageous to make them and not what some rule of a governing board requires them to be.

The Berlioz symphony was performed with a delicacy of shading and an elegance of execution that were delightfully in keeping with the subject-matter. The D'Indy number was an admirable effort on the part of the soloist, but only a professionally correct one on the part of the accompanying forces. The Brahms selection was a lively dash down stairs and a lusty greeting to the playground by boys at the last ring of the

school bell.

The great pleasure of the concert was the reading of the symphony. Every man in the orchestra entered into the feeling of Berlioz, the revolutionary of three quarters of a century ago, who still in themselves no longer startling. Wonseems a rebel, though his formulas are derfully persuasive is the orchestration of the "Harold in Italy," even if unconvincing are its programmatic efforts. It The "Harold" symphony and the folk determination to lead the romanticists seems strange that Berlioz, with all his tune fantasia did not prove altogether to victory, did not find some way to be companionable. They are indeed both more original in his harmonic scheme. from the French repertory, and they Like Weber, he seems to have thought are by two of the greatest composers that Mozart and Beethoven had taken the Parisians have ever produced. They harmonic exploration as far as it could may be regarded, therefore, as having a go, and so he had to express his fervid desirable unity. Further to their ad- sighings in melody and instrumental vantage as side-by-side pieces in a pro- color alone. He was a most attractive gram, they represent two epochs far hero as the soloist and the field presented apart, and thus offer a plausible historic him. Dr. Muck probably ought to have contrast. But over against these favora- the credit of the delightful reading of ble arguments from unity and contrast, the work, but it really appeared as is to be placed the more weighty and though the players did the thing themunfavorable argument from monotony. selves and that the conductor and his For they are both solo pieces, and they baton had no part in it. both make very nearly the same kind of demand on the attention of hearers. The first calls for a long period of listening to the somber-toned viola; the second calls for a period of listening to the plaintive-voiced oboe.

Now there can hardly be named a sound that expresses more effectually that early nineteenth century mood which we call sentimentalism than the C string of the viola. If there had been at the command of Berlioz a more potent means of describing the romantic hungerings of the thirties than the low register of this instrument, we may be sure he would have found it. And as for the sound of the oboe, the solo instrument in the D'Indy fantasia, there exists none more aloof and disdainful. It is the very voice of reverie. It is the pipe they played in Arcadia when they wanted to meditate; not the one they blew, we may be sure, when the shepherds and shepherdesses danced. Sentimentalism for three quarters of an hour and melancholy contemplation for a quarter of an hour, make a doubtful emotional scheme for a symphony con

cert.

But an ideal program is not to be expected when the orchestra is packing up for a tour. If the seventeenth pair of concerts is a scramble to complete a repertory for the trip to New York and the other great cities of the southern monthly trip, there is no reason for carping. It is to the interest of the subscribers and the community at large that the orchestra go prepared for its last visits of the season and that it does itself credit while away. In a remarkable way this organization maintains its