A Contrapuntal Life

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 301, 29 March 1945, Page 8

A Contrapuntal Life

‘THE talent for written musical criticism and interpretation very rarely coexists with outstanding ability as a performer; but Albert Schweitzer, whose playing is featured weekly by 1YX, not only reached the top of the tree in both these capacities, but distinguished himself also. as a theological writer, tutor, and preacher, and as a medical missionary. By his thirty-fifth year he had become famous as a concert organist and expert on organ construction and restoration; he had collaborated with his former teacher Widor to produce the edition of Bach’s organ works which is now in general use, and he had published a long book on Bach which, revolutionary at the time, is still the most important book on the subject. In 1905, at the age of thirty, he decided that the time had come for him to = help humanity by more direct personal service. He took a medical degree and left for equatorial Africa, where he built a cottage hospital in the jungle. There, with only rare journeys to Europe, he remained. 7 * * Schweitzer’s playing does not need his remarkable prestige as a fourfold doctor and a practising Christian to support it, but, like every other aspect of his life, it gives the impression that he knows just what he is doing and why. His interpretation of a Bach fugue is a complete conception from the broadest outlines of its architecture down to the smallest detail. The G minor organ fugue which radio listeners know mainly through Stokowski’s enjoyable arrangement grows, under Schweitzer’s more restrained treatment, with an excitement and tension that ultimately surpasses the rich effects of the orchestral version.