SAINT-SAENS AND BARTOK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 151, 15 May 1942, Page 7

SAINT-SAENS AND BARTOK

Piano Recitals By Henri Penn

ENRI PENN has every reason to take a special interest in the works of Saint-Saens, whose Fifth Concerto he played with the NBS Orchestra from 2YA on Tuesday, May 12. He played under Saint-Saens in Beecham’s orchestra in 1912 when the great French conductor came to London to conduct and play at a concert in his honour.

Saint-Saens was in his 77th year then, and Mr. Penn remembers him as a dynamic little old man whose playing was superb and whose conducting was always definite and masterful. Members of the orchestra who attempted to help the old man to the rostrum found him self-reliant to the point of irritability. Tuesday evening’s performance of the Fifth Concerto is believed to be the first in New Zealand, and two years ago in Melbourne, Mr. Penn played it for the first time in Australia. It was performed first of all in Paris in 1896 at a concert commemmorating the 50th anniversary of Saint-Saen’s debut. He played the piano part himself. Like Beethoven, he wrote five concertos. The fifth is influenced by his travels in the Orient, and in the slow movement he uses a number of old folk tunes. Not many pianists play the. concerto, but Mr. Penn thinks it is sure to become popular on account of its lightness, folk interest and above all its pleasant music. On Friday of this week, May 15, Mr. Penn intends to present from 2YA ten minutes of music by another famous composer whom he met in Londonthe Hungarian modernist Bela Bartok. Mr. Penn met him, along with John Ireland, Frank Bridge and Alan Bush (a young futurist composer) at a festival of contemporary music just before the war. Bartok, who played and conducted his own music, is a dynamic personality. On Friday, Mr. Penn will play four short pieces by him,