New and Strange

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 476, 6 August 1948, Page 8

New and Strange

EOPLE will pay a lot of money to hear what they have heard before, but they are apt to stay away in droves from the concert hall if the artist has a reputation as an innovater. Yet Richard Farrell, though he has commented publicly on the chilly reception his presentation of Hindemith received, did strike some sparks in his Christchurch concerts with the Prokofieff Seventh Sonata and Aaron Copland’s Sonata. Farrel! is a pianist who sees clearly all the time, but sometimes, and particularly with Bach, it seems that he sees the notes and not the form, nor does he feel very strongly about the music he is playing. But if it may be argued that his Bach is a little ;shapeless and mechanical, there can be no argument about his interpretation of Prokofieff or Copland. From the extraordinary opening of the Copland Sonata, a hesitant, downstairs staggering chime, to the brutally re-iterant rhythmic strength of the last movement of Prolcofieff’s Seventh Sonata, Farrell had no doubts of the form or intention of the music. He was inside the composers’ skulls, putting his. prodigious technique at the disposal of their thoughts and feelings, shaping a solid edifice for his audience to touch; or, if the listeners had the capacity, to grasp. It won’t be many years, unless the boys at Oak Ridge or Los Alamos pull down the roof on us all, before Farrell will be equally at home with Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. aes .