_idea_ in music. In transcribing I try to forget I am a
violinist, in order to form a perfect picture of the musical idea--its
violinistic development must be a natural, subconscious working-out. If
you will look at some of my recent transcripts--the Albaniz _Tango_, the
negro melody _Deep River_ and Amani's fine _Orientale_--you will see
what I mean. They are conceived as pictures--I have not tried to analyze
too much--and while so conceiving them their free harmonic background
shapes itself for me without strain or effort.

A REMINISCENCE OF COLONNE

"Conductors with whom I have played? There are many: Hans Richter, who
was a master of the baton; Nikisch, one of the greatest in conducting
the orchestral accompaniment to a violin solo number; Colonne of Paris,
and many others. I had an amusing experience with Colonne once. He
brought his orchestra to Russia while I was with Auer, and was giving a
concert at Pavlovsk, a summer resort near Petrograd. Colonne had a
perfect horror of 'infant prodigies,' and Auer had arranged for me to
play with his orchestra without telling him my age--I was eleven at the
time. When Colonne saw me, violin in hand, ready to step on the stage,
he drew himself up and said with emphasis: 'I play with a prodigy!
Never!' Nothing could move him, and I had to play to a piano
accompaniment. After he had heard me play, though, he came over to me
and said: 'The best apology I can make for what I said is to ask you to
do me the honor of playing with the _Orchestre Colonne_ in Paris.' He
was as good as his word. Four months later I went to Paris and played
the Mendelssohn concerto for him with great success."

V

SAMUEL GARDNER

TECHNIC AND MUSICIANSHIP

Samuel Gardner, though born in Jelisavetgrad, Cherson province, in
Southern Russia, in 1891, is to all intents and purposes an American,
since his family, fleeing the tyranny of an Imperialistic regime of
"pogroms" and "Black Hundreds," brought him to this country when a mere
child; and here in the United States he has become, to quote Richard
Aldrich, "the serious and accomplished artist," whose work on the
concert stage has given such pleasure to lovers of violin music at its
best. The young violinist, who in the course of the same week had just
won two prizes in composition--the Pulitzer Prize (Columbia) for a
string quart