FRIEDMAN'S CHARM

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 101, 20 July 1927, Page 15

FRIEDMAN'S CHARM

A LARGE AUDIENCE Last night M. Friedman’s second concert was attended by a large audience—not yet, however, the largest possible audience, which his playing has so richly deserved. A mercifully unhackneyed programme was headed by the great Chaconne of Bach, from the solo-violin Sonata in D minor, arranged and enlarged uopn by Busoni. The Chaconne is too outrageously difficult, in its original form, to be played acceptably by more than a very few violinists, and it has gained more frequent hearing by this transcription. But one wishes that Busoni had not remoulded it quite so freely to his heart’s desire. Probably a great part of his harmonic additions is implied, more or less, in Bach’s score. Yet the final result is curiously unlike Bach — impressive and interesting, and even thrilling, but singularly' different . . . Friedman played it with a splendid breadth and energy, but his tone lost a good deal of its characteristic fineness, temporarily. The beginning of the major section showed how beautitifully he would play a reflective piece of pure Bach. It is possible that Friedman, a notably well-poised and disciplined intelligence, is not in sympathy with all the moods of Chopin, that very different person. Thus, his reading of the Berceuse left us with an odd impression that he had forgotten the child, while he fashioned for it a most wonderful little silver cradle. And similarly, in the first movement of the B minor Sonata Friedman seemed to miss the trouble and questioning of spirit. But the Scherzo was a puire delight, and the Largo was done with great refinement, the Finale with exhilarating vigour of tone and rhythm. The Sonata, as a whole, will be remembered gladly. Friedman has shown originality, at several points, in the making up of his programmes. Last night he took the revolutionary step of playing two nuimbers, other than the “Spring Song” and “Bees’ Wedding,” from Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words.” But even Friedman, charm he never so sweetly, cannot undo the stuffiness of the F major “Song,” Op. 53, with its poignant flavour of a wet Sunday in 1837. This is a true museum-piece, which might have inspired some unkindly page of Lytton Strachey’s “Queen Victoria.” The E minor Scherzo was quite another matter —very charming in itself, apart from the charm of Friedman’s performance. Of two Viennese Dances by Gaertner and Friedman (written in collaboration), the first was a pleasant but slightly commonplace waltz, resembling Johann Strauss more than Kreisler; and the second was a high-spirited and effective little thing, well liked by the audience. It was perhaps a pity that Brahms’s Paganini Varia.tions were played at the end of the programme, when receptivity was becoming duller. These Variations were for years the most difficult of all piano works. They have lost that leather empty title, but they are still a monument to Brahms’s learning and invention. Their union of phantasy and massive knowledge is sufficiently rare, and neai-Iy all these pages seem destined to a long life. Friedman’s was a truly superb performance, full of colour and humour and “brio.” People with long memories could compare his reading with those of Backhaus and, Moiseiwitsch —not to the detriment of our latest visitor. R. J. B.