MR KETTEN.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2130, 21 December 1880, Page 3

MR KETTEN.

The following description of Ketten'e playing is from the "Otago Witness." It is amusing, and the Ohristohuroh public will noon be able to judge if it is true:— "A little incident wbioh occurred at Ketten't first recital, and was repeated on the following nights, tells its own tale. A number of the audience rose two pieces before the ten minutes interval, and made for the door. Were they disgusted, tired out, surfeited? Not in the least. They had simply got wrong in their tally. Ketten began with a sonata of Beethoven's in three movements, separated in performance by a slight pause. A part of his intelligent audience took these three movements for the three first items in the programme, miscounted consequently all through, got to the " interval" two pieces in advance of the performer, and went off for their beer or their smoke without discovering their mistake. Beethoven's solemn "adagio" they had read as a " gavotte,'' and had listened i/apiantly to Chopin's apirituelle " Berceuse" us Liszt's transcription of the " Wedding March!" I have heard before of an unsophisticated audience assembled to hear the " Creation" mistaking the preliminary operation of " tuning" for the " Representation of Chaos," with whioh, as the programme informed them, the oratorio began. That was not altogether an unnatural error. But to mistake a Beethoven adagio for a gavotte! 'Ugh I the barbarians! I agree with the " Daily Times'" critic, that Ketten's music might to draw, despite its high artistic character. As a mere exhibition of miraculous agility and sleight of hand it leaves Haselmayer's prestidigitation absolutely leagues in the rear, whilst its force, fire, electric energy, impassioned tenderneas, might rouse and fascinate even the dull intelligence of the savage. There are times when Ketten teems bent on the destruction of the piano. The instrument has offended him, and he will smash it up. He has made a vow, nothing ■can turn him; he will break a string, break ten strings, will do it here and now, and he flings himself upon the unfortunate Fleyel like a mad Briareus, hundred-handed, bent on a sudden and furious deed of pianicide. You shudder, pant, gasp, the damp gathers on your brow, and an inarticulate cry is barely arrested at your lips, when, like a flash of lightning, the player's mood has changed. He is coquetting with the Fleyel as a lover with his mistress, whispering it, tickling it, bending over it like a young mother over her smiling infant, cooing to it, oaressing it kissing it; and the piano, like a living thing, responds in kind. It laughs, sings, rejoices; the music leaps from it in fountains of melody, sweeps majestic in rivers, gathers and rushes headlong in torrents, swells and rises in a tempest of harmony, sinks in measured rhythm, stops dead—and you can hear your own hair grow —moves again stealthy and sad to the dying close; and the magician Ketten lifts the last note out with a touoh soft as an angel's footfall. When you have done deliriously clapping your hands (my palms ache at this moment) you thrust your knuckles furtively into your eyes, then attempt to make some gasping remark to your neighbour in the next seat and find you are inarticulate. Vox faucibus haerit, and you begin to understand that you have really had a new sensation and a great excitement. I know I'm a little Ketten mad, or I shouldn't write like this. Those who laugh at my fervours had better put themselves in the way of catching the disease before the chance pass. Ketten is the only musician who has put my critical instincts utterly to the rout and reduced me to happy slavery. When this Titanic player is at the piano, whatever is is right."