SHE WENT TO BE AN ANGEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 44, 26 April 1940, Page 20

SHE WENT TO BE AN ANGEL

And Stayed To Play The Harp For Henry

INIFRED CARTER confesses, if that is the right word, that she went to the U.S.A. in 1922 to be an angel. But Ossip Gabrilowitsch heard her and persuaded her to stay and play the harp for Henry Ford’s Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Now on leave, she is back in her native New Zealand and at the moment is rehearsing with Andersen Tyrer’s Centennial Festival Symphony Orchestra, with which she is to go on tour as harpist. The festival over, according to present arrangements she will go on tour through New Zealand broadcasting and giving recitals. An Australian tour may follow. The angel episode was staged by Aimee Semple McPherson, American evangelist, Miss Carter had her first lessons on the harp from her father in Auckland, F. Carter, of Mt. Eden. From there she went to the Sydney State Conservatorium: of Music,.She played under Verbruggen and became Professor of the Harp at the Conservatorium. In Aimee’s Temple It was in Australia that the evangelist saw her and her publicity possibilities. As the "Golden Harpist of Australia" she was brought from Australia to Los Angeles for Mrs. McPherson’s "Angelus Temple." She played there for a year until Gabrilowitsch made an offer to her

to take the position of first harpist in the Detroit Orchestra. Only woman among 90 players, she has stayed there since, apart from breaks in which she has visited Europe to study under Grandjany at Fontainebleau, and other great teachers, The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is one of the greatest of the great subsidised American symphony orchestras. For the musicians employed in it, Miss Carter says that work is continuous, seven days a_ week. With Famous Conductors In America she has played under every famous conductor except Toscanini. On tour with the orchestra, or in Detroit with guest conductors, she has followed the batons of such men as Goossens, Walter, Schneevoigt, Ormandy, Stokowski, Barbirolli, Reiner, etc. When Mr. Tyrer knew she was in New Zealand he made sure that she was also in his Festival Orchestra. She had planned to give recitals immediately but finds orchestral rehearsal work taking so much of her time she must postpone those ideas until the festival season is finished. Her Instrument Apart from her magnificent playing, her harp is in itself a matter of some interest. It cost 3,000 dollars, and is an American Wurlitzer make. It is the

largest size of concert harp and has unrivalled tonal qualities. No instrument has survived without changes or modifications in its structure as long as the harp, Miss Carter’s_ instrument, although modern in manufacture, is immensely old in tradition, It has proved itself adaptable to changing musical techniques and is still essential to the complete orchestra. No other instrument, for example, could give the peculiar glittering tones needed in the fire-music for "The Valkyrie," and in chamber music the harp can round off the lovely effects of strings and woodwinds. The harp may be described as the strings and sounding board of a piano laid bare and divorced from the controlling keyboard and hammers, but the essential differences between the two instruments are greater than their superficial likenesses. . Dare Ethel Smyth has always been a doughty champion. of the women players in orchestras. At one time she had a hard battle. Of. one orchestra she wrote-" It was an all-male body, except, of course, as regards. the harp ...a solitary, daintily-clad, white armed sample of womanhood among the black coats, as it might be a flower on a coal dump." .- When listeners hear Miss Carter they will know not only that she is a very beautiful player, but also ‘that the harp is a very beautiful instrument.