KAPELL PLAYING MOZART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 761, 19 February 1954, Page 5

KAPELL PLAYING MOZART

Sir,-Colin Newbury’s poem, "Kapeil Playing Mozart," published in a recent issue of The Listener, was a weird conglomeration of classical references, ambiguity and beautiful poetry. Referring to a pianist who was known to his friends as "Willy" as "Supreme Prospero," and endowing him with Ariel-like limbs, struck me as being decidedly funny. If I am not mistaken, last year The Listener published a poem which a friend rather cynically dismissed as having been written because there happened to be a cemetery under Grafton Bridge. At the time I disagreed, but now I feel doubtful of my previous opinion, especially when we have in this poem the rather melodramatic lines-"Accomplished hands-rumour of troubled seas"-hinting darkly, I presume, at Kapell’s untimely death. If Mr. Newbury had wanted to write a poem as a tribute to the mastery of William Kapell, a happier choice might have been "Kapell Playing Copland." As it stands-apart from the title and the vague reference in the last line of the poem, anyone but Kapell could have been playing» Mozart.

MYRRHA

(Auckland).

(‘‘Myrrha" may be less amused if he can understand that "Supreme Prospero" is the conductor. of the orchestra with which Kapell is obviously playing a Mozart concerto. From that opening it is an easy transition to "capricious limbs of Ariel,’’ though once again the reference is not to Kapell, but to the flying notes "in fee of two masters’’-that is, composer and pianist. The poem is not intended to be a tribute: it is simply a poet’s impression of a good pianist playing Mozart.-Ed.)