HEIFETZ

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 78, 23 June 1927, Page 14

HEIFETZ

SUCCESS OF HIS FIRST j AUSTRALIAN RECITAL. j

A MATURED ARTIST Jascha Heifetz, playing his recentlyacquired Guarnerius violin, delighted a great audience with its entrancing tone and his flawless technique at the Sydney Town Hall, says the Sydney “Herald,” in the first recital of his new Australian tour. Modest, almost diffident, in bearing as he walked on to the platform, grasping his violin with the care that so precious a possession justifies, he received a great welcome. Then he played, and at once subjugated his audience, not so much by any profound depth of emotional impulses as by the exquisite beauty of his tone and his astonishing command of the technical resources of his instrument. It is fascinating to watch this great artist in his absolutely effortless style. The most formidable difficulties fail to disturb in the slightest his self-

possession, his air of calm detachment, his imperturbable gravity. Any impression of diffidence vanishes once he draws the bow; lie becomes then the personification of confidence, so compelling in his security and his polished art that the listener, held captive, almost ceases to think of a deeper fervour and emotion. In his playing of the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor the violinist emphasised the beauty of the melody. It was in the andante movement, one of the most beautiful of Mendelssohn’s conceptions, that the personality of the violinist was reflected. The rich tones of the Guarnerius poured forth Bach’s air on the G string, and a contrast was afforded in the following piece, a delicious rondo by Schubert. Claude Debussy’s piano composition, “The Girl With the Flaxen Hair,” cleverly transcribed by Hartman, an American violinist, was a delicious bit oil work. The dainty morsel was repeated before Heifetz played Reis’s “Perpetuum Mobile” and a Paganini caprice. There were several encores, including the “Ave Maria” of Schubert. It is interesting to note that on his previous visit to New Zealand Heifetz used a “Strad.” A jazz house-cleaning is announced from New York, where the leading jazz band conductors have organised and announced that, for the well-being of popular music, the filth should go and that hereafter, none of their organisations will play music connected with indecent or suggestive songs.