Excerpt from Pacific Coast Musical Review, Vol. 47: October 10, 1924 April 1, 1925
Mr. Bliss is very clever and skillful, although not a speaker who is easily understood inasmuch as his diction has been somewhat neglected. He has, as most modern composers must have, a very keen sense of humor and is willing to apply it to himself as well as to others. He concentrated most of his comment upon the works of Vaughn Williams, Goossens and himself. The former two he illustrated, as it were, on the piano with a fine touch and a keen sense of artistic propor tions. Specially delightful was his splendid shading of phrases that under less skillful hands would sound somewhat banal. His own works he illustrated by means of a talking machine, and while Mr. Bliss seems to think this a more satisfactory means of transmitting his musical thoughts than through the keyboard of a piano, the writer is not of such opinion.
Of course, he wanted to show himself as a writer of orchestral and ensemble music which he could not do very successfully on the piano. But if we are not mis taken Mr. Bliss composed some fine things for the piano and it would have been interesting and, no doubt, enjoy able to hear the composer himself interpret them. Not being in sympathy with the ultra modern school, although cheerfully acknowledging the right of others to enjoy the same to their heart’s content, we could not keep step with Mr. Bliss when he felt inclined to be little Mendelssohn and exalt a few modern English writers. Mr. Bliss contended that Mendelssohn be longed to a class of composers who begin as geniuses and end as talents. we are under the impression that if an artist is once a genius he is always a genius, no matter how he may occasionally deteriorate. If Caruso occasionally was somewhat 0d color this did not lessen his greatness. The moment a genius is not a genius he becomes a paradox, and that is something we have not yet discovered in our artistic experience.
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