PEOPLE IN THE PROGRAMMES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 55, 12 July 1940, Page 9

PEOPLE IN THE PROGRAMMES

One of Three F he had not been accompanied by his brother Jascha, and by Edmund Kurtz, Tossy Spivakovsky would undoubtedly rank as the most notable player of chamber music to visit New Zealand in the last five or six years. When they toured in 1936 the Spiva-kovsky-Kurtz trio (seen on right) created an impression which still makes listeners look eagerly for their names in the programmes. Like his brother Jascha, the pianist, Tossy wanted to make music when he was very young, and began his first lessons on the violin when he was only six years of age. They had left their’ native town of Odessa very young and learned their first mysic in Berlin, ‘eighteen Tossy was the youngest player ever to hold the post of first violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

make one of the items of the week. Michael Head’s work is a fair sample of a broadcast which includes songs by Delius, Armstrong Gibb, Herbert Hughes; and piano pieces by John Ireland. Ireland is another composer in the same tradition as Head. In fact, when Michael Head was in New Zealand some two or three years ago, Ireland was one of the composers whom he set up as example of a good workman in the modern manner. Then travelling as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London, Mr. Head did not disguise the fact that his chief interest was in song writing. "A test of a good song," he said, "is whether the poem is equally effective, recited or sung. The music should follow the natural rhythm and’ accentuation of the poem, conveying its meaning as simply and as melodiously as possible,"