MUSIC AND MEANING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 12

MUSIC AND MEANING

Isaac Stern Believes in What He Plays

_ A CONCERT artist doesn’t have a favourite piece or composer — what he is playing at any given moment is his favourite, says Isaac Stern, the American violinist, who will be the next overseas artist tc visit New Zealand under contract to the NZBS Stern will arrive in Auckland on Monday, September 15. He will play in Auckland on September 16 and 18, in Wellington on September 20 and 22, Dunedin on September 24, and Christchurch on Septem. ber 25. "If you play a piece because it’s the right length, or because you need something light o1 something showy just at a particular spot in the programme, or because some other people like it (I mean, if you don’t like it yourself) you aren’t going to make your audience like it,"

he is quoted as having said in an interview with the New. York Times, "You must play a piece because it has a meaning for you, and you communicate that meaning to the audience. ° "I’m lucky. I like a great many kinds of music, so it isn’t hard for me to include many facets of music in a pro-gramme-the classics because they are great and beautiful; the moderns because the composers of my generation say something to’me about our times. "Even the so-called war-horses-works that are supposed to be popular among the classics-I don’t tire of them

any more than audiences tire of them. They are loved because they have merit." Stern includes new music as often as possible in his programmes. ‘Isaac Stern will be heard next week in two recordings — the Sibelius D Minor Concerto and the Mendelssohn E* Minor Concerto. The Sibelius recording (made with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra) will be heard from 1YX on September. 1 at 8.20 p.m., and from 4YA on September 7, at 2:30 p.m., and the Mendelssohn from 3YL on September 6, at 8.48 p.m., and 2YA on September 7, at 2.0 p.m.