ANOTHER CELEBRITY PIANIST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 371, 2 August 1946, Page 19

ANOTHER CELEBRITY PIANIST

Solomon Will Broadcast Here This Month

British pianist, will arrive in New Zealand on August 13 to give 12 public concerts under contract to the NBS, the first on August 16 at the Wellington Town Hall. Following his practice overseas, one half of each programme will be broadcast. Solomon, who is the only person listed in Who’s Who with one name only-he acknowledges no other name publicly-is 43 years of age and single. And, for those New Zealanders who may meet him, he prefers to be addressed simply as Solomon, without any "Mister." The pianist, many of whose recordings are possessed by New Zealand collectors, began music lessons when he was four, under a teacher who went to the house in the East End neighbourhood of London in which Solomon grew up. He was the son of an emigré Russian tailor who loved music but was himself unable to play any instrument. Regrets He was a Prodigy He says: "I had a career as a prodigy until 15, when I retired, and then after five years of further intensive study I started to perform in public again." And he still regrets the childhood he didn’t have because he was a prodigy, worldfamous at eight. Of child prodigies, he says: "If I had a son or a daughter who showed brilliant promise, I would never let him or her be an infant prodigy, who is faced not only with losing the ps the celebrated

priceless gift of normal association with contemporaries, but, perhaps in his late teens, with finding that the talent to which he has sacrificed everything is about to fizzle out. The best advice I can give to parents is to let their child give a certain amount of time to musical studies, but let him or her also have a thoroughly normal childhood." Solomon studied first under Mathilde Verne and then with Dr. Rumschisky in London, and with Alfred Cortot, Lazare-Levy and Marcel Dupré in Paris. He returned to London in 1921, where he resumed his concerts at the Wigmore Hall. He first visited America in 1925, and has toured Europe. He has played frequently for the Pianoforte Society of London, where engagements are offered only to pianists of such calibre as Schnabel, Artur Rubinstein, Cortot, Gieseking, Prokofieff and Backhaus. During the war he played a great deal for the Forces, not only in England, but in North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, France, Belgium, Holland and Gibraltar. In 1944 he devoted two months to India and Burma, giving 36 recitals in 51 days, and flying 40,000 miles; and since the war ended he has also played in Germany. Solomon is known as the ideal artist for recording and broadcasting. His tastes range from Bach to the extreme modern school and he has been called the "compleat pianist."