"PART OF THE MUSIC ITSELF"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 365, 21 June 1946, Page 6

"PART OF THE MUSIC ITSELF"

An Interview with Lili Kraus

Lm KRAUS was working in a studio at 1YA on Sunday afternoon and I stood outside listening to notes coming faintly through two thick doors. I opened the first door, notes less faint, then with great care I opened the second door and heard fully with astonishment and delight: she was playing, with what energy and vitality, Bela Bartok. I stood and stared and listened, till Dr. Otto Mandl, her husband, came from behind the door and greeted me. "Let us go into the next room and I shall show you _ photographs and materials and then you shall speak with Lili Kraus," he said, gently showing me the way. "But," I said, "if I could stay and listen. . . ." So he led me across the room and introduced me to Lili Kraus and to their beautiful 16-year-old daughter, Ruth. "Now shall I continue? What shall I play? Ah this. Very lovely music; cannot be heard too often-Bartok." The energy, the extraordinary impression I had of energy going into that piano: here she sat, often still, with straight back, slim shoulders, a black high turban on her head, black longsleeved jersey, black slacks and highheeled shoes, one gleaming ring on a right finger, a dull gold clasp in the turban; and out from that black glowed her bent and moving fage, her flying hands. I watched those hands, then and later, and I marvelled at their smallness, their slimness, and the volume of sound that they were producing. Later we talked about them. "Feel these muscles," she said. I felt them and they were hardfirm and rounded, almost knotted, along the edges of the palms, between thumb and forefinger. Their strength, she explained, came from a loose wrist-play, constant vibration of the wrists (acting like the "vibrato" of a string player), she had long ago invented. for herself. "In the very moment of stress you could say that my wrist is already loose again; thus I am always able to produce great volume without pressure." I asked if she found this energetic Bartok exhausting to play. "Bartok exhausting!" she exclaimed.

"Impossible! Now 20 minutes of a Schubert movement such as thisshe illustrated from "The Wanderer" Fantasy — could be called tiring: but this Bartok is part of me. I was singing it as a child of three, four, five, six; I know it as well as I know my eyes or my hands. How wonderful, how vital it is! But then Schubert is even more vital." Her use of the word vital gave me my key-word. I asked if she had been practising call day and the family of three laughed. "My wife has been delivering a lecture,’ Dr. Mand! said.

"A wonderful, a perfect lecture," said Ruth. "Yes, quite extempore. A lecture to my daughter." They all looked so-happy about this lecture I wished I had heard it, and said so. Lili Kraus leaned back over the chair, looked at the ceiling, said slowly "Um-the theme was-let me see-that where the technical difficulties are to be seen, perceived, easily recognised by the hearer, the music is not the greatest; the greatest music has the fewest obvious difficulties. So with Mozart; they hear this and they will say ‘so simple, like a child’s play.’" She was silent and still and then she played a few bars from a Mozart sonata. "So simple, like a child’s play," she had said. And so it was, and yet it was not. "And to come to that," she said, "has taken me twenty years, twenty full years. And this, full of dynamics-a Chopin etude-twenty hours if as much, Certainly not more; but how difficult, how clever it appears to those who do not know." She turned round from the piano and leaned forwards, hands clasped, elbows on her knees, something specially important to say. ‘ "And if the performance is good it can never be said ‘Gosh! how well she plays!’" How electrifying I found that word Gosh! "The artist must have achieved technical excellence, must have studied until material things no longer intrude, until he has gone beyond mechanics and is able to become himself part of the feeling, the vision, the message, whatever you may call it, of the music itself." From this we came to a discussion of the artist’s duty towards the composer, with Beethoven’s "You must be as faithful to the text as possible; you must add nothing and you must omit nothing. Yet, if you play the notes only as they are written, you have done nothing for the rebirth of music" for text. "There are so many commentated, that is annotated, editions of great works, and naturally many prefer to play from them because the added comments and _instructions seemingly help them in interpretation. But hardly ever these com-

ments and instructions are the original ones, very often indeed contradictory to the original intention. For instance, in the opening bars of Mozart’s A Major Sonata, the original is thus:

and most commentated editions thus:

But what a difference! You will perhaps spend sleepless nights wondering why, why Mozart indicated one incredibly difficult phrasing or another strange grouping. But at last you will understand and you will know that it must be that particular way, no other." "So you were not misquoted in Australia when you were reported saying the voice of God could talk much more undisturbedly through Mozart and Schubert than through Beethoven." "No. I was not misquoted, though that is perhaps not so simple. Let me say that I think Mozart never, Beethoven sometimes, is forced to rely on technical routine; Mozart is never deserted by his genius, the highest in music, the voice of God or whatever you may choose to call it." "And Beethoven is sometimes so deserted?" "Yes," "Would you say that this is possibly something governed by the individual’s reaction to the composer? Is it possible that another may honestly find that Beethoven never, Mozart sometimes, is so deserted?" % With the greatest care she made her reply. "I would be a fool, an utter fool to say I could not be mistaken, I could not be wrong. It is true I may be wrong. But I think Mozart did hear clearly, perfectly, this highest in music without exception from the time he was mature." She then began to illustrate, here in Beethoven, but not here; here in Mozart, here again. And if she did not enchant and win my unwilling logic, she did wholly enchant and win my willing ear. %* % % SOMETHING that had happened in 1929 was mentioned, something that had happened in London. "Yes," she said, "London in 1929, my first concert there. How very sweet it was. I was young and there I went and played simply and naturally and everyone was so kind. The critics were so kind everyone was astonished. I did not know London was so difficult then. Later I learned to tremble, I assure you I learned to tremble." "But you had no cause to tremble later, surely?" "Perhaps not. But I did tremble, The critics were not unkind, but I always expected. . ." "When fame comes the intrigues begin," said Dr. Mandl. * x * ‘THAT first visit to London was before ~ Ruth was born, We talked about the

problem of the family and a music career. "That is always a problem," Lili Kraus said; "an insoluble difficulty." The repeated griefs of many separations shadowed her face. After a pause she began to speak about her son Michael, left behind in an agricultural school in Sydney. "I am nof happy about him," ‘she said. "I should so much rather have him here with us, perhaps at school here. His accent! He is already talking about plying a gime! But it will go. We were so long in Australia when we had expected to be there perhaps two days on our way to New Zealand." "But why New Zealand?" I asked. "Well, it has been New Zealand ever since 1938, we’ve been on the way here eight years," Dr. Mandl said. I still asked why New Zealand? "Oh, because we had a dear friend, _Dr. Condliffe, we knew him in Geneva and in London," Dr. Mandl said. "And now at last when we come here he is in America. Yes, it goes a long wav back. Even before 1938 we had planned to visit New Zealand. But in 1938, the day Hitler marched into Vienna, we were in Paris and that night we did’ not sleep, The next morning we began to try to get our papers for New Zealand and soon we succeeded. But Lili had concerts in London and in Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, etc., and the war had begun six months before we were ready to leave for the Dutch East Indies. There Lili’s 40 concerts grew to 150, and with 12 months in Bali, we stayed much longer in Indonesia than we had planned." "And suddenly the Japanese were there," said Lili Kraus. "Do you feel you wish to talk about that period?" I asked. "No. It is not worth it," she said. "Except this, this is important. For one’ whole year I had no piano. For the last 18 months we were together and we had a piano; but for the first year, ‘the whole year, I did not touch a piano. Now for the whole of my life before I was not ewithout a piano for more than a week, ten days."

"Even when the children were born?" "Even then. Ten days, wasn’t it so Dicky? I was playing again in ten days." "Yes, and on the very last day, both times, the day they were born you were playing," Dr. Mand1 said. "Yes, it is so," Lili Kraus said. "And this was a disaster, it was to me the most terrible thing to lack a piano for ten days. But now see what happened: for one whole year I did not touch a piano and yet problems were solved, were resolved. It was a miracle." Her hands were clasped across her face and her thumbs pressed against her temples. "And yet," she said, "it was not a miracle. It was a miracle only if we regard music as material and technical, the result of practice and the work of skilled hands. But it is not so. The Highest is in the mind and in the heart, it is in what 1 call the vision; without that the hands are nothing; with that the hands will obey, the hands must obey. Yes, in that year I came to understand much that had been difficult, insoluble, before; when I began to play again it had become clear." Ea x a UT," she said, "we could talk of these things for a year, for ever. In the meantime tell me this, is there a students’ club here? I love to play to students if they ask me." "Who if the professor?" Dr. Mandl asked. "Would you be able to arrange something with him? Lili loves to play for university students; of course there is no charge-in Brisbane they twice took a collection among themselves for food for Britain-but that is a matter for them to decide." "But you see, do you not, that I cannot ask? The invitation must come from them," Lili Kraus said. I told her that the students had Sunday afternoon music recitals and that Owen Jensen arranged lunch-hour concerts on Fridays. She wes delighted: "Perhaps I could play there too. Do you think I might? Do you think he would ask me?" I said I thought it was most likely, certain indeed, that he would like to ask her, but would wonder if he. dared. "Oh, please," she said, "do let hirn know that he should dare. Oh, this is really what I like best." "And are there any plays?" Ruth asked. I mentioned the University Drama Club’s production of Peer Gynt, to begia the next night. Lili Kraus, Ruth and Dr. Mandl all sprang with enthusiasm, three voices together saying, still to my surprise, "Please may we not go to that? Yes, please take us to that."’ So I quickly went to the telephone and arranged with the producer for three seats for

three enthusiastic visitors. I should point out that the producer was enthusiastic too. I went back to the studio and told them. Then they took me with them to their hotel to dinner. As we walked ‘up the hill in the flying wind we were all cheerful and those three were optimistic about Peer Gynt. I felt I had to remind them that it was to be a students’ production done with limited resources-not a famous Viennese production. But, they said, being by students it must have a freshness and a liveliness and they were not looking for a Viennese production. "And by the way, you know I am not Viennese," Lili Kraus said to me. "My husband is Viennese, but I am Hungarian." "Your father was Czech and your mother was Hungarian; you are not pure Hungarian," Dr. Mand! argued. "Yes, my father was Czech and my mother was Hungarian and I was born in Buda-Pest and I am Hungarian, truly I am Hungarian," said she. "Your father was pure Czech, he could not speak Hungarian very well — you agree he could not speak Hungarian very well?-and you were born in Buda-Pest and that makes you -" "Oh, please, please, Dicky, I am Hungarian, I am true Hungarian!" and she walked backwards up the hill in front of him, pleading. "Very well, then, you are true Hungarian." It was a happy family bicker. Bo a By EROPLANES and ships are no friends to Lili Kraus. To travel without extreme discomfort in an aeroplane she resorts to a position which would surely be of extreme discomfort to most other people-she lies on the floor between the seats. She suffers from neck-cramps, but these she prefers to air-sigkness. Her first sleep in Auckland after the’ Tasman crossing was a record one of eleven hours. "Of course we are permanently., always, under-slept, if one may say such a thing," she told me. Her concert dresses, which she designs herself, had not yet arrived from Australia. "But I can make you a drawing, I love drawing," she said. So she maae

a drawing, her own design, of a gown made in Java by a Parisian-born dressmaker. (This is her drawing of the white chiffon and black lace dress she will wear at her concert in Auckland.) We had a_ conversation in praise .of slacks, another in praise of

low-heeled shoes, and I drew her a plan directing her to shops where she could buy shoes for herself, perhaps a sports coat for Dr. Mandl. She was fascinated by that furry fruit, the Chinese gooseberry, learnt with interest that crisp apples as well as mountains could be found in the South Island. She told me stories of Sir Thomas Beecham’s wit; I told her stories of another quality he has. It could have continued in this way for long enough; but she needed another record sleep and I needed to stare at my typewriter. I suppose I might have been there still if it hadn’t been for Peer Gynt. I promised to call for them next

evening.

J.