Fast-Slow Performer

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 504, 18 February 1949, Page 8

Fast-Slow Performer

|F the well-known Charlie Kunz is popularly titled "the loud-soft' pianist," Rodney Pankhurst, whom I heard from 4ZB, could fittingly be described as a "fast-slow" performer. Bar 1, Andante; Bar 2, Prestissimo; Bar 3, Largo; Bar 4, Allegro-and the whole Molto Rubato. I don’t usually seek out jazz pianists on the radio, but this one was substituted for "Chopin Music," and the comparison of jazz and Chopin would come to mind as I listened, especially as one of Mr. Pankhurst’s numbers was announced as "Deep is the Night," adapted from Chopin’s "Tristesse." I had not heard that Chopin ever wrote a composition of this name, but I am always willing to learn, even

if it does mean listening to an arrangement of one of his more popular works. There were other comparisons which occurred. to me. Dance tunes _performed in, this programme .could . not (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) have been danced 0, and you can’t really use any of Chopin’s dances for "the ‘purpose of performing a ballroom .waltz or mazurka, either. Chopin liked rubato, too, but its use can be overdone in jazz as in the music of the Romantics, and anyone who likes popular music to sound as though it had the same number of beats in every bar had better not li§ten to Rodney Pankhurst. But there, I’m not up in all the latest developments of style as applied to the performance of the latest jazz, and it may be that this out-of-time playing is something vital and particularly good that I haven’t yet learned to appreciate.