IT'S DIFFERENT WHEN YOU'RE THERE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 375, 30 August 1946, Page 8

IT'S DIFFERENT WHEN YOU'RE THERE

ERHAPS it is unfair to remind the listener who hears but doesn’t see the’ performances of the visiting musicians ‘we are getting now that he is missing half the pleasure, that there is a difference, almost beyond belief, between hearing a pianist over the air and hearing and seeing the same pianist from a seat in a Town Hall. Probably it needs no rubbing in. Yet that is the truth, and it is the justification for an*attempt here to convey to the absent listener some idea of what one of. the \audience has enjoyed. ; Possibly the absent listener questions "half the pleasure." "A quarter, or a third, perhaps," he may say, "but not half." He enjoys what he hears.a great deal, and perhaps is reluctant to admit that there could be as much enjoyment again. Working out the fraction can be left to psychologists who have nothing else to do; but the fact is that when you go and hear and see Solomon or Lili Kraus playing in the Wellington Town "Hall, the added joy, whether it is a third, or a quarter, or .142856 of the whole, is such @ stimulating part of it that you come away almost *eling that your radio might as well be dismantled. You settle down in a day or two of course. Just what is in this extra fractibn? gWhat makes it seem so much at the time? , % * % 2OR one thing, there’s the fact that you can see with your own eyes that the music is being made at the very moment you hear it. That sense of immediate contact in time alone "is some- | thing that even the stay-at-home knows about. You can test its power indépendently of all the other things that happen in a concert hall, simply by hearing a broadcast recording and a studio. performer. There is more to be had from hearing a studio performance, provided it is good, than there is to be had from hearing a gramophone record of equal quality. Knowing that the performer is thinking of what comes next at precisely the same moment as you are, somehow or. other throws extra light on it for you; and the very fact that something might go wrong unites you with the performer. : * ig * YET that contact in time is only one thing. Many other things unite you with the performer, and ultimately with . the music, when you are present, and you see and hear everything that. happens. It is this feeling of sharing the whole thing that brings you as near as. possible to full knowledge of the music, The fact that "something could go wrong" unites you with the music. The human facter, which is too easily fargotten if you are sitting at home hearing a gramophone record that will do precisely the same thing through infinite | ‘repetitions, is there all the time to make | you feel you are a part of what’s going on. _ But when it becomes the knowledge that something could, but nothing will "

go wrong, the excitement is tremendous. It sets you on the edge of*your chair. Solomon does that. He has the kind of technique which tells you in the first few bars that everything he plays will be just as he wants it. He is superbly efficient. Every chord has a.crisp, brittle clarity. Rapid figurations are impeccably played. Fine and lovely embroideries are worked round implied chords, smooth and even in every detail. The thrill of seeing a complicated thing controlled in every part is so exciting that you feel you are hearing far more. The sound at any given moment during a complicated openwork passage is so clear that it seems just as simple and even as it would if all the fingers were playing one clear chord. % * * HREE Brahms pieces were Solomon’s first introduction to the New Zealand audience-the G Minor Rhapsody and two Intermezzi., The three were so different that they were capable of telling you everything about him-about the strength with which, he brings" off the grand sweep of the Rhapsody, the watmth and richness in his playing of the B Flat Minor Intermezzo, and the light, flitting gaiety in the C Major Intermezzo. But hearing these was just settling in. Seeing Solomon play for the first time in your life, you spend the first ten minutes thinking about the man, He comes out from the green baize door modestly but briskly, and makes -his four neat ‘bows (a full circle of them, because the audience is in the choir seats behind the piano as well as in the hall). Then he sits down in a businesslike way, flicks the tails of his coat over the back of the leather stool, and begins to play. He doesn’t watch the audience and wait until the murmur ceases altogether. He starts playing when it has nearly stopped. Then, it stops quickly. Soon he is communing with the music, solitary in the severely masculine barrenness of the stage, which had flowers on it for the previous NZBS concert. It occurs to you for the first time that the man is really alone. He travels alone, has no one with him to share the life he leads. He brings, as far as you can see, nothing but his person. He plays from memory at all times, and you see no sign of a sheaf of music. He lives alone in a hotel, and at the end of a day, perhaps after a concert that has moved and excited hundreds of people, he is left with his own company. . Yet you could not call him a lonely man. He seems complete of himself, with the music he,carries in his head. shit 3 Bg He : AFTER the Brahms pieces, Solomon went straight onto the Waldstein sonata without leaving the stage to make a break between composers. His interpretation of. it was quite different from ‘anything we have heard. He began the first movement, proceeded as he began, and ended as he proceeded. It was marvellously clear; again, the technique was superbly efficient, and the playing abso« (Continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) lutely honest. But his way of making the first movement sound all of one piece was to play it almost as if it were a brilliant Toccata, without incidentperhaps like a Scarlatti sonata based on one feeling and one idea. It was going ahead all the time in the same state of motion-and the same state of emotion. The impetus was enormous. But you had no expectation of a dramatic or subtle change of mood within the movement, or any incident that would create a tension in it. The movement itself, as Solomon played it, was one incident. After the Waldstein, Solomon played Schumann’s Carnaval, and here the radio listener has one advantage. He has no one across the aisle to come and say to him, "No wonder Schumann got. the dingbats. Mad-crazy music." Solomon took an athlete’s delight in his triumph over the last enormously difficult piece in Carnaval. With a frown on his brows, and a smile on his lips, he revealed what sheer physical joy there can be in being able to play such music. The audience’s response to the group of five Chopin pieces, ending with the Polonaise in A Flat, was a reminder that Chopin will continue to be for a long time the composer our audiences really want to hear most of all when a good pianist comes. ue om % EAVING your home and radio and going to a concert is one way of moving nearer to the music, but there’s another way that’s better still-going to rehearsal. The final rehearsal for the orchestral concert at which Solomon played Beethoven’s "Emperor" concerto was held in the Town Hall the night before with pleasant informality. The whole programme was played, but back to front on a sort of farewell symphony basis. The Tchaikovski Fifth Symphony was done first. Then all the brass except

two trumpets and one or two other players were free to put their’ coats on and go home. That left 45 players for the "Emperor" Concerto. When-this had been played right through with one or two passages repeated for final touching up, all the wind players and the tym; pani man were free to go, leaving strings only for the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 of J. S. Bach. It is not the usual habit of orchestral players to stay and listen to music if they don’t have to. .And while the orchestra shed players through the evening, Dr. Edgar Bainton, the conductor, shed outer garments until he was in his shirtsleeves, Since a rehearsal does not constitute "any entertainment" in the terms of the

no smoking notices, smoking is the accepted thing. And there is a certain wicked pleasure in knocking out your pipe to the obliterating rhythm of a loud part in the "Emperor" Concerto, especially when Solomon himself is playing with a cigarette bobbing up and down between his lips. And if you can’t fulfil that longing to take the tympani player’s job at least you can knock in time with him, Familiarities of this kind could get out of hand no doubt, but taken in moderation they serve to make you appreciate the virtues of formal presentation; they make you glad of the respect for the music that is implied in the conventions of the concert hall. Actually final rehearsal is not the one to go to if you want to see the music taken to pieces and worked over and hear how a conductor and his players make the rough places smooth. At final rehearsal the job is more a run-through with a recapitulation here or there to enable conductor and soloist (in the case of the piano concerto) to improve some detail of tempo or phrasing or-the balance between piano and orchestra. Even so it is not necessarily without incident. There was the wind player who had a conspicuous little solo of ten notes which he couldn’t get right. First he had the notes wrong. When he got those right he couldn’t get the rhythm right. At last with some help from Solo--mon who played the phrase on the piano the notes were played as written. "Is that how you want it?" asked the player. And Dr. Bainton, replying on behalf of Ludvig Van Beethoven. said it was.

A.

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