Murder in the Bach Country

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 332, 2 November 1945, Page 8

Murder in the Bach Country

S Edmund Wilson has by no means succeeded in scolding me out of a weakness for Ngaio Marsh, I dived happily into Died in the Wool, only to find that’ it is not a book in which a Viewsreel commentator can ‘escape from ‘occupational worry. During the hour of the murder the most promising suspect was heard practising the piano-would it be Liszt’s Rigoletto Paraphrase to harmonise with the corpo in sacco motif of the crime at Mount Moon? No, of all things, Bach’s Art of Fugue and then

some Chopin, Alleyn.easily busts this highbrow alibi by finding that an unspecified radio station, well received in the Mackenzie Country, turned on just then An Hour with the Masters, featuring at 8.5 the Art of Fugue and at 8.25 a Chopin polonaise, so that the suspect was able to slip away from the piano, leaving the radio to deputise for him. But does the NBS own a piano recording of the Art of Fugue? I rather think not; indeed, I doubt whether one exists. A studio recital? ‘I can’t think of any New Zealand pianist likely to submit the Art of Fugue as a_ broadcast offering, and if I could I am sure he would be as shocked as I'am at the suggestion that he would compress into 20 minutes Bach’s last and most complex work (which should last well over an hour) and then burst into a Chopin polonaise at the end of it. Yet, according .to Miss Marsh’s hypothesis, on ‘January 29, 1942, unkriown hands played the Art of Fugue from some station or other (probably an NBS _ premiere) and it was butchered to make a Mount Moon alibi. Whodunit?