NZBS CONCERT SEASON OPENS NEXT WEEK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 766, 26 March 1954, Page 30

NZBS CONCERT SEASON OPENS NEXT WEEK

HE first of the Broadcasting Service’s guest artists for the 1954 concert season will be giving their opening performances at the end of next week. The British pianist Solomon will play the first of two concertos with the National. Orchéstra at Wellington on Saturday, April 3, and the Australian violinist, Perry Hart, accompanied by Doris Veale, will give a studio recital on Sunday, April 4. Both performances will be broadcast by all YC stations. Soiomon, one of the world’s greatest pianists, will already be well-known to most listeners. Details about his career have been published in recent issues of The Listener, Perry Hart, on the other hand, is comparatively unknown, having only recently completed six years’ study in Europe and America. She began what appears to be a promising career with a tour of her homeland-Australia-last year. Perry Hart spent her early childhood in Mullumbimby, a country district of New South Wales. She is said to have read music before she could talk. As a toddler she wanted a violin, so her mother had a special one made for her when she was two-and-a-half, and devised a method of teaching her to play by using a different colour for each note. At seven she played for the Budapest Quartet and at nine won a scholarship to

the N.S.W. State Conservatorium. From then on scholarships paid for her tuition. In addition she appeared as soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and in the ABC’s "Young Australia" recitals. It was also when she was nine that the great Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman heard her play and advised her parents to make music her career. Two years ago, when Perry made her debut in Holland, a country which idolised Huberman, one critic wrote: "Huberman’s prophecy has been fulfilled. At all times one was entranced by her great gift." At the age of 16 Perry Hart’s talent brought her to the notice of Szymon Goldberg, another distinguished Polish violinist, who was then touring Australia for the ABC. She became his only pupil, following him wherever his engagements took him, and earning the nickname of "Goldberg’s Shadow." In Holland, where shd has spent much of her time abroad, she has played with the Hague Orchestra and for Radio Netherland. During the 1952 Holland Festival she had the opportunity of playing in Benjamin Britten’s chamber group, and with her teacher, Goldberg, she has given recitals in several Dutch cities. She found Dutch audiences good, and considers Holland the most artistically active country in Western Europe. In the field of chamber. music, her own best

love, she says that every second person plays some instrument and audiences therefore are particularly knowledgeable. A friendly, slightly-built girl of 25, Perry Hart is not dedicated exclusively to music. She is fond of hiking, has walked the length and breadth of Holland, and is proud of having scaled a 14,000ft. Henk in the American Rockies. Doris Veale, who will accompany Miss Hart, is a New Zealand pianist recently returned after seven years in London. She began lessons at the age of four, and at 15 was awarded a scholarship by the associated board of the Royal Schools of Music, At the Royal Academy she won several awards, including the Harold Samuel Bach prize, and was appointed a sub-professor. She has acted as accompanist to the London Philharmonic Choir and the Croydon Philharmonic Society as well as teaching and recital work. New Zealand listeners will have opportunities to hear her in solo performances before she returns to England in August. The entire orchestral concert at which Solomon will perform will be broadcast from all YC stations beginning at 8.0 p.m. on Saturday, April 3. His concerto will be Beethoven’s No. 5 (The Emperor). The studio recital by Perry Hart, with Doris Veale at the piano, will be broadcast by all YC’s at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, April 4. The programme consists of

Corelli’s "La Folia," Brahms’s Sonata in A, and Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance in G Minor. Miss Hart is scheduled to give two further studio recitals, a concerto with the National Orchestra at Auckland, and a recital for the Wellington Chamber Music Society. As well as accompanying the vidlinist, Miss Veale is to give concertos with the orchestra at Christchurch on, May 13 and Dunedin on May 18.