PADEREWSKI

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 87, 4 July 1927, Page 4

PADEREWSKI

ANOTHER STRIKING RECITAL A POPULAR PROGRAMME For Paderewski’s second recital, on Saturday night, there was a gratifyingly large audience, almost every seat being occupied; and again his hearers were lavish of applause—especially, with a curious but not unexpected perversity, after the less artistic numbers. This was a “popular” programme, much of it excessively well known to habitual concert-goers. But always one must be interested in hearing the reactions of so fine a spirit as Paderewski’s, however threadbare the music with which it was engaged. He played first the G minor (organ) Fantasia and Fugue of Bach, arranged by Liszt. Musicians arte returning to the belief that these things should be heard, as nearly as possible, in their original form; and we may look toward a day when only the clavier pieces will .be played by pianists. In any case, Paderewski is not the man that one would choose for Bach: his temperament is alien from the meditative weight and gravity of the greater works. It may be questioned, indeed, whether any Slavonic artist has been completely successful in the interpretation of German music, earlier than Beethoven’s. The C sharp minor Sonata (called the “Moonlight”) has been played so often, while other great sonatas lie neglected, that it cannot now be heard with the keenest interest. There was much to admire, however, in Paderewski’s performance—far more than in the “Appassionata” of his first concert. The Adagio received noble treatment, and the Presto was better poised and more Beethoven-like than the quick movements of the "Appasionata.” The Allegreto alone did not satisfy. Paderewski’s name has been associated always with the Schubert Impromptus, of which he played on Saturday B flat and A flat from Op. 142. His readings were perfect in the simplicity and naturalness of their lighter passages; and the tragic minor variation of the B flat, and the pianissimo close of the other, were most memorable. Unalloyed pleasure was given by a Chopin group. The marked rubato, and the sudden alternations of loud and soft, have been sometimes a little trying in more solid music. Here they were used legitimately, and often with superb effect. The G minor Ballade, after an opening somewhat slower than usual, but no less expressive, was developed into a structure of vital interest and significance. The Nocturne in D flat major, Op. 27, was all “exquisite and rare,” without a tinge of weakness or sloppiness; and these words may be applied to the Berceuse also. Of the two Etudes, that in A fiat (Op. 10) demands special note—a whimsical and finely polished performance. The loveliest of Chopin’s valses is not the A flat (Op. 34), though Paderewski’s enchanting rhythmical sense made it seem so, for the moment. The pianist’s “Chant du Voyageur” is a poetic but not very striking little work. “Nocturne a Raguse,” by Ernest Schelling (the American pianist, who was a pupil of Paderewski), is perhaps rather forced; its harmonic freedoms, and its occasional angularities of outline, were doubly welcome in a programme where the unexpected almost never happened. The second Hungarian Rhapsody of Liszt, the Schubert-Liszt “Hark, Hark, the Lark,” and “Erlking,” and the Paganini-Liszt “Campanella” were also played very brilliantly—a feast, no doubt, for the lovers of such virtuosity: for other people, a surfeit. The numbers included the most popular of Paderewski’s own compositions, his Minuet in G. Never before had it sounded so charming. —R. J. B. Do not discard felt hats. They make excellent floor-polishers. * * * When washing green vegetables use borax instead of salt. It removes all insects and keeps vegetables crisp. To clean a flour-sifter hold a lighted piece of paper under it.