Music In The Bush

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 212, 16 July 1943, Page 5

Music In The Bush

h [ico promoted from the rank of to be Warrant-Officer in Music, the former Christchurch pianist, Peter Cooper, visited New Zealand recently on leave from the A..F. Not long ago, WarrantOfficer Cooper became attached to the Army Education Service of the Australian Forces, and until he came away,

was working on a scheme for musical entertainment and education at a station "somewhere in the bush." The Listener interviewed him three years to a day after he left New Zealand as a civilian to study the piano in Australia. Before he joined the Army, Peter Cooper did the rounds of concert halls, suburban music clubs and concerts, and the work of which he is most proud was his accompanying for Dorothy Helmrich, the famous lieder singer, who visited New Zealand earlier this year. "But there are no concerts for me now," he said. Musicians "in the bush" were widely scattered, virtually at action stations, and it had not yet been possible for him to assemble groups of performers. The gramophone is, therefore, the mainstay of his work, but as soon as he can get a piano, he will put it on a truck and go round with it to men at their posts. New Zealanders will envy the musical activity of Sydney as Warrant-Officer Cooper described it. During a recent Beethoven Festival, when all the Beethoven Symphonies were played, and all the Concertos (Thomas Matthews and Eileen Ralph took solo parts), the Conservatorium Hall was booked out in advance for the whole series, and on one occasion, 2000 people sat in the gardens outside and heard the concert through an amplifying system. Peter Cooper has just completed a recital tour of main National stations in New Zealand.