TWO GREAT ARTISTS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2893, 4 October 1916, Page 3

TWO GREAT ARTISTS

IX A SUPERB PROGRAMME

Wellington is sometimes slow to recognise . real talent. A tow weeks ago two remarkably gifted instrumentalists, representing tho highest musical culture of Russia —tho most vital nation musically of the ago—arrived hero and wero heard by a more handful of people, a proportion of whom wero impressed with the strangers' virtuosity. These wero Alfred Mirovitch, a_ nota>bly gifted pianist, and Michael Piastro, a violinist wljo takes* rank with the best wo'liavo heard for many a long day. They returned to tho. Town Hall last evening, and wore greeted by a. large audience, which went into, ecstasies of | applause over their playing. That adulation was not misplaced. Both of.the visitors are artists in the truest sense of that much mi&used word, and tho concert they .gave last-evening ufas a feast of the best in music. They played the Grieg Sonata in G major in amanner that evoked tho highest praise, colouring each motive with a now beailty, and thoroughly realising that eerie charm that haunts the Norwegian's music. The second movoment is of surpassing beauty. It appeared to be invested with some of the cold stateliness and/placid beauty of the composer's native fiords. Delicacy and power in treatment was -wedded to a searching insight into tho character of the sonata. Mr. Mirovitch is a brilliant and highly emotional pianist, who.is, remarkable to relate, devoid of any taint of pose, mannerism, or affectation. Ho is tho embodiment of the modem ltussiaoi artist, completely equipped technically, and a. player with the tioul of a poet- Ho plays Chopin divinely. The cool beauty of ihe Nocturne in F sharp major was excellently conveyed-; so were the rip"ping, ilashing gushes of sparkling melody that jewel the' valses in G mmor aiid A Hat major, and the Ballade in G minor, was played with musicianly iorco-ind abandon. Encored, ho played a strangely rhythmic "Finnish Dance" by Palingren. He also played with fine breadth and fecl- ; ing the Rachmaninoff "Prelude in G minor" (not the C sharp minor, as incorrectly programmed), his own gentle, little "Spring Song," that is as fresh and dainty as a bed of early violets, and the Homeric "Twelfth Rhapsodic" of Liszt. And to that arresting bracket he added the brilliant "Krakowiak" of Paderewski, in which he marked the weird Wlavonic dhythm by,' literally stamping on tho pstlals. , Michael Piastro is marked for greatness. His tone, is tho wonder of all j violinists, and both in that regard and in temperament ho is comparable to .Klman, but. perhaps is rather less magnetic. His playing caused rapturous delight;' He played tho "Praeludium aiict Allegro" (Pugiiant-lfreisler), . the beautiful '"Siciiene" of liach, tran-1 scribed Ijy Auer (played on muted j strings with admirable smoothness and finish;, a Paganini-Auo "Caprice" (No. 24), and the familiar "liose-Marin" caprice of Kreisler, played at a prodigious speed, but as clean-cut as a' cameo—a veriteiblo • gem this. _ His finale bracket, included Krcislor's "Venetian Caprice," which calls_ for some nice double-stopping and delicate harmonic > playing; tho always-popular "Htimoreskc" of Dvorak, and Sarasate's difficult play on airs from Bizet's "Carmen," which exhausts tire resources of the violin, but found in M. Piastro a fluent master.