PADEREWSKI

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1928, Page 7

PADEREWSKI

A NIGHT TO HE REMUMBERED. LONDON, October 16. Paderewski played at Queen’s Hall last night a night to be reinenibereu with special care by Hie assembk .. thousands, with care and with p.oty, since in the nature of things a night ol Paderewski cannot but become an erer greater rarity and soon nothing but an unattainable memory. Ihe lion grows old. Once tawny, lie is grey. The greyno.ss spread last night to the audience, tlianxs to the extinguishing ol all lights but a couple in tiie ceiling which threw down pallid, lunar gleams. The old daws can still a tack in a loyally leonine way. We were given I'iano placing of the grand sort. Not ininllibly accurate or always easeful in •style; but supremely noble. “How hard the marble from the mountain’s heart!’’ commanded a great poet. Paderewski seemed to be tearing music from the piano, to bo hectoring the recalcitrant, instrument, demanding of it at times more than it had in it to say.

Sometimes lie wearied in his attack, but lie returned indomitable. The roughnesses only testified to the great man’s spirit. When lie chose to persuade soltly it was exquisite.

SCHUMANN AND BEETHOVEN.

He began by playing Schumnnf “Symphonic Variations,” Beethoven’s Op. 1.00, and a selection from Liszt’s trn t iiisnidptions of Schubert—an hour and a half of music, straight off the reel. A peculiarity wa.s the punctuation of Schumann’s final the commas wore turned into semicolons.

Paderewski, in his present phase, is well suited by late Mcethovon. The arioso in the sonata-—the most mnviiio thing in Beethoven —meant to him perhaps more than ever lie fore in his life. In two of the Schubert pieces (“Aul Deni V asser’‘ and “Erl King”) wrists and fingers tired.

Afterwards came Chopin and Liszt. Chopin’s Polonais in E flat minor was more imposii . and tragedy-laden than wo bad ever known it. Paderewski’s Chopin is far from the languishing music of cverydav concerts.

His Liszt (2nd Rhapsody and the “Campanella”) was, one felt, surely something very like wliat those pieces were in the ageing Liszt’s own bands: fired by a nobler spirit than the notes on paper suggest and nureolcd by a singular personal prestige. At half-past ten began a supplementary recital—Debussy, the girls’ chorus from “The Flying Dutchman” and more Liszt.

Paderewski’s recital had as usual this minor distinction, that the pianomaker’s name was not advertised on the platform in the ordinary gross manner. Why does the average' pLinist also mot pin a placard to his coat tails to advertise his tailor? Paderewski does not do these things.