Temple Auditorium (February 11, 1910)

Carreño appeared at the Temple Auditorium in Los Angeles with the Symphony Orchestra conducted by Harley Hamilton. She performed Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 (Grieg, Edvard), Berceuse (Chopin, Fryderyk), and "Marche Militaire" (Schubert-Tausig). She performed on an Everett Piano.

The concert took place in the afternoon. Critics noted that her concert drew the largest symphony audience on record to the Auditorium.

Advertisement: Los Angeles Times, 11 February 1910, II2.

Announcement: Los Angeles Times, 11 February 1910, II5.

Review: Los Angeles Times, 12 February 1910, II5.

Kijas, Anna

Los Angeles Times, 11 February 1910.

"I do not need two rehearsals with your orchestra, Mr. Hamilton," said Mme. Carreno, yesterday, to the symphony director; "for two years ago I played with it one morning—just for fun—and I know its caliber and the capabilities of the men in it. One rehearsal, thank you, is quite sufficient."

So Mme. Carreno will have her rehearsal this morning, and this afternoon, at the Auditorium, she will play the Grieg Concert in A Minor, Op. 16.

The orchestra will be heard in the overture to Mascagni's "William Ratcliffe," the Mozart symphony in E Flat and the Grieg symphonic dances on Norwegian themes.

Los Angeles Times, 12 February 1910.

Mme. Carreno was the bright star of the symphony, giving, for some cause or other, a much greater exhibition of piano technique and art than at her own recital the other evening.

Perhaps her familiarity with the Grieg Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16, has something to do with it, for she has played this brilliant work many times and in many great halls.

The Concerto itself, which is quite well known, is an extended work in the modern style, well constructed, exhibiting a great deal of thematic originality and experienced constructive skill, as a whole dramatic, and generally interesting, though containing some passages of no great moment.

Mme. Carreno's interpretation was that of one who views the composition as a master sculptor views his forming statue—a being as a whole, with all features and lines controlled and brought out by the scheme of the work as a unit.

Mme. Carreno's phrasing, her climaxes and her vivid tempi, especially, were superb.

Her technique was well-nigh perfect, and her gradiations of tone, at times sustained for long measures in the daintiest pianissimo, and again rising in more than masculine power to dominate even the orchestral tutti, were feats for the student to marvel at.

To an insistent demand for an encore she responded with the Chopin Berceuse, beautifully played in true Chopin style.

Still her audience would not let her go, and she came forth again to execute Tausig's arrangement of Schubert's Marche Militaire, which she gave with splendid fire and precision.

The orchestra played the rarely heard though by no means extraordinary "William Ratcliff," overture, an immature output of Mascagni, and, as a principal work, the Thirty-ninth, E Flat symphony of Mozart. This symphony, which demands great delicacy and lightness of touch to make it interesting, was very well rendered under Mr. Hamilton's baton, though the orchestral stroke—probably from the unavoidable lack of many rehearsals—was at times a trifle heavy.

The programmed concluded with the Grieg symphonic dances on Norwegian themes. These studies are somewhat ponderous to be put under the terpsichorean classification, but are interesting, original and full of Norwegian color. They are intelligent and absorbing pictures, and were given with the special insight which Mr. Hamilton always demonstrates in his interpretations of northern music.