Cinderella No More. By Lionel Tertis. (Peter Neville. 12s. 6d.)
KIRSTEN FLAGSTAD and Lionel Tertis are supreme musical, not literary, artists. Their singing and viola-playing have told the world the most interesting 'things about them and their books are something of an anti-climax. Mme Flagstad's story was told in two parts to Louis Biancolli, an American journalist who wrote Mary Garden's memoirs in much the same way. Politics unhappily overshadow the second half of her story, but the life-chronicle of any artist loses interest in any case once he or she has become an International Celebrity; and apart from her unusual and charming contract with Bernard Miles, the second half. of Mme Flagstad's life has fewer surprises than the first. She claims to be a thoroughly average Norwegian woman, only exceptional as a singer; and in as much as such a dichotomy between an artistic and a human personality is possible, this book would seem to suggest that she is right. Musicians are often unusually incoherent when they speak or write about music, and nothing in this book would lead the reader to suspect that Mme Flagstad's is an exceptionally sensitive musical organism. Her comments on music are not so much naive as commonplace; and it is difficult not to feel that she consented—rather unwillingly, it seems—to the publication of
her life-story largely in the hope that she could thereby finally lay the unhappy ghosts which dogged her from the years of the war. The good faith of her actions at that time is as clear as their almost incredible un- wisdom; and with that the whole unfortunate story may be dismissed and forgotten. This book will certainly not increase Mme Flagstad's stature in any reader's eyes, but it may be a relief to her to have told her story and the rest of us will prefer to remember her by her singing.
Tertis's is the, story of a crusade which, unlike most crusaders, he has lived to see triumphantly completed. His whole life has been spent in the service of the viola, which he found a Cinderella and has made a princess, enlisting by his art and his deter- mination the interest of many of the first composers of the day. His book is an easy, colloquial account of an extraordinarily devoted life, enlivened by anecdotes of musical life and musical personalities. In an appendix the curious will find a diagram of the Tertis Model Viola which, rather than any book, will remain the true monument to his genius.
M. C.
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