SOLOMON SAYS...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 780, 2 July 1954, Page 19

SOLOMON SAYS...

H, Mr. Solomon, your playing of the Beethoven sonata in your programme tonight was just as Beethoven would have wanted it.’ Dozens of times this remark, or something like it, has been made to him after a concert, says Solomon, the world-famous pianist who recently toured New Zealand, and each time he has wanted to reply: "And how on earth do you know?" When. Solomon was in New Zealand he recorded a brief illustrated talk for the programme Music Magazine | on "Some Aspects of. Interprétation "of Becthoven’s Piano Works," and it will be broadcast at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 6, from a link of the YC stations. His talk should be of great interest to all pianists. As one who has studied Beethoven’s music for a lifetime, Solomon says, he is now just on the fringe of interpreting Beethoven as he would have wished. In contrast to Mozart, who put little or no indication of tempi and dynamics in his -scores, Beethoven took enormous care in marking his score. "It is absolutely essential,’ Solomon says, "to pay the greatest possible attention to the lesson of the master." In some editions of Beethoven's piano wotks, however, editors have taken

liberties with the text and have added their own dynamics and tempi marks which, in Solomon’s opinion, completely destroy the composer’s intention. To illustrate what he means he plays extracts from the Appassionata Sonata,

-he Sonata in E Flat, Op. 81a, and other | works, playing first the ‘interpretation | that Beethoven marked on his scores, | and secondly the different interpreta- | tions that have been written in by later editors. His conclusion is that’ we must | "follow with the utmost fidelity the original markings."