Page 3 Advertisements Column 3

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12145, 6 January 1909, Page 3

MADAME CLARA BUTT AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL. For vary few muscial ventures is it: safo nowadays to predict succees witli: any dogre3 of certainty. But It nee<fc; t:o peculiar gift of prophecy to do so • ivbero a Butt-Rumford concert is concerned. - It may go without sayings then, that a big crowd found Ms wajr to tho Hall last.night, and that, enthusiasm was in the. Sir. The occasion happened to be the last uporr which Madame Clara Butt's L&iddiiV.dmirers were to have an opportunity of hearing her this year, and there was: an additional reason, therefore, for the?warmth of tho tributes which the evening brought in its train. Indeed, it; may bo remarked that the proceedings: wero drawn out to undue length by tho audience's insistence upon n enepr©3, >r with the result that many had perforce to loavo before Madame Butt, midway in the programme's «oond half, reached? her final contribution—Cecil EngeThardt's now song, "In a Child's SmalF Hand." Early in the evening the popular contralto made evident the fact that f.ho was in splendid voice, and impress xf all cars by the feeling and fervourwit.h which she sang Gluck's "Clio faro" thereby recalling one of her•sarliost successes in London, when she* ■.•ippoaivd as a student in a Royal College of Music performance of "Orphic." Franco Leoni's pretty triilc. "The Loaves and the Wind," served? her for an encore, and at her subsetU'.enfc appearance Madame Butt presented in a favourable light Mis> Maude Valeric White's new setting of •'Load, Kindly Light." Another of thzr occasion's novelties was Madame Lcxa Lehmann's quartet, " The Birth of tlier* Flowers," a setting of some prettilyconceived lyrics by Madeleine Lneette*Ry'cy. In this iiirtance, MadamoButt bad tlie support of her three sistors, whoso names figured on the programme simply as " Pauline, Ethel, and" Hazel." Tho last-named was making-; hoi debut, but, in due couire doubtless, a better opportunity will occur of" forming an opinion of her qualities*The audience -warmly welcomed the* j four sisters, and made them renent: Ma«lamo ■ Lehmenn's gracefully writ Lent quartette.