On This Day, 19 April 1917

Birmingham Daily Post

Thursday 19 April 1917

CONCERT AT THE THEATRE ROYAL

A miscellaneous concert was given at the Theatre Royal yesterday afternoon in aid of Miss Ashwell’s scheme for concerts at the front. Miss Ashwell herself urged the claims of the scheme in a charming little speech; and Mr Marcus Harvey worked up the patriotic feeling of the audience by an impassioned recitation. The concert itself ran on the usual lines for those affairs, and reached the normal height. Miss Dorothy Silk and Mr. John Goss repeated familiar successes, and Madame Gleeson White sang a big aria from Tchaikovsky’s “Maid of Orleans”. A Roumanian tenor with Italian production Mr. Constantine Stroesco, turned a copious vein of facile sentiment upon a number of songs. Mr Arthur Cooke played one or two piano solos that came under the category of gymnastics rather than that of music. Mr. Sydney Brooks showed capacity as a ‘cellist, though almost all his playing was slightly marred by a tendency to slither from one note to another instead of attacking the strings squarely. There are five scales in use in modern music,—the major scale, the minor scales, the diatonic scale, the chromatic scale, and the sliding scale. The last is chiefly employed by nervous violinists and cellists. Mr Wassell was an efficient accompanist, though his tempo at the commencement of “Caro nome” was too rapid and that of “Mussorgsky’s “Hopak” thoroughly  too slow. There was an “augmented” orchestra but it did not interfere seriously with the conversation of the audience.