TRIPLE COUNTERPOINT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 345, 1 February 1946, Page 7

TRIPLE COUNTERPOINT

An Interview with Frank Hutchens and Lindley Evans

UR interview with Frank Hutchens and _ Lindley Evans, the duo pianists from Sydney who are touring New Zealand just now, took the form of a trio in one movement for reporter and two pianists, with a fourth part in the coda section, where there was an added passage for publicity-manager. It was performed on the upholstered furniture which the NBS keeps just outside Studio A at 2YA. ~ When we came on.the scene, everyone seemed to be writing something down. It turned out that the man in charge of studio bookings was putting Mr. Hutchens. and Mr. Evans down for times when they could rehearse in the studio, and they in turn were noting these times in their diaries. After this had been attended to, we introduced ourselves and the talking began. Mr. Hutchens, it ought to be repeated, is a New Zealander himself-he was born at Leeston-and his brother, Will Hutchens, conducts the 3YA orchestra. Mr. Evans comes from South Africa. The pair of them have been playing two-piano music together for 21 years and know each other’s ways pretty well by now. And they are both professors of the piano at Sydney’s Conservatorium. For two men who are being proclaimed in very big letters on just about every second Wellington tram as The World’s Greatest Duo-pianists, Mr. Hutchens and Mr. Evans are modest, approachable fellows. We began by asking them what life around a Conservatorium is like, never having been in one ourselves. More Students than Ever _ "Well," said one of them (and at this stage.we had not learned to note down just who said what), "there are about 2,000 students there now, which

is more than there ever were before, and there’s one big building with a lot of studios and offices, a hall that holds a thousand people, a buffet, a library, a record library-the records are available for loan to State schools-and the Conservatorium has two orchestras, one mainly teachers and adult musicians, and one a student orchestra. It also gives two seasons of fully-staged opera in the hall each year." "Of course, you’ve got to realise," said Mr. Evans (this time it was Mr. Evans), "that there’s a great deal of musical life going on in Sydney at the present time. It’s estimated that this year in Sydney there will be 100 orchestral concerts at least. That’s in one city in one year." "I dare say that’s a bit of an eyeopener over here where there’s such a deficiency of orchestral music," said Mr. Hutchens. "All concerts over there are repeated, you know, because the audiences can’t be accommodated. -The subscribers in one year have first preference when subscriptions re-open for the next year, and of course they hang on to their bookings. "Probably," he added, "we'll reach the stage when people will leave their season tickets to theif friends in their wills. They do that in America, I believe. Incidentally, the people who haven’t got season tickets get a chance to get in on the second night of each concert." ‘From Bach to Bax Since we have not seen any programmes, nor had ‘any indication of what was in their repertoire, we asked our visitors for the names of some of the composers whose music they will play. Mostly, they will play music that was originally written for two pianos-Mozart (sonatas), Brahms (his own arrangement of the Variations on a Theme of Haydn), Rachmaninoff (one of the Suites), Arnold Bax (Moy Mell, which is Irish

for "Happy Plain"), Arensky, Arthur Benjamin, Sinding (a set of variations), Saint-Saens (Variations on a Theme of Beethoven), Darius Millhaud (a movement from Scaramouche), César Franck (his own arrangement of Les Eolides) and so on. Then they will also play some of Bach’s organ work, arranged by Harold Bauer, and some of their own compositions for two pianos. Some orchestral works that are now much played by orchestras were introduced to Sydney, they believe, by themselves, in two-piano arrangements. Two of Debussy’s Nocturnes (arranged by Ravel) were probably first heard there when they played them. Another piece they used to play a lot before it became so popular with orchestras was Chabrier‘s "Espana."

Recording Our Composers Apart from their own pieces, they are not playing anything by Australian composers. After we had enquired about this, the conversation drifted quite naturally to Alfred Hill and Mr. Hutchens, who calls him "Alf," was able to tell us about the new scheme of thé Guild of Australian Composers (of which both he and Mr. Hill are members), acting in collaboration with the Columbia Gramophone Company and the Australian Performing Rights Association, to have recordings made of outstanding works by Australian and New Zealand composers so as to increase the knowledge of local composers among the record-buying public. Records of Alfred Hill’s String Quartet No. 11 were on sale just before Christmas, It was round about here that the publicity manager, Mr. Brady, came into | the conversation. He listened to what we had been talking about for a while, and then he said that he thought it would be interesting if we mentioned that Mr. Evans was a South African

and also that he was the tallest concert pianist playing to-day-six feet, four and a-half. "And that one about the way you’ve played together for five and ahalf hours the great masters, all memorised," added Mr. Brady. So we took: that down. "Yes," said Mr. Hutchens, "that’s a point; we do memorise ‘everything, and of course it’s quite different from memorising a solo work where you go on playing all the time. You can memorise a speech all right, but if’s not so easy to memorise every second word of a speech. We have to remember long rests, and parts that are in themselves music-ally-unsymmetrical, shall we say." Our interview ended with a teaser. Why, we asked, do two pianos not sound twice as loud as one? But Mr. Hutchens didn’t seem able to give a much better answer to that than anyone else has given. -$--------------- i"!