The Lowest Rung

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 11

The Lowest Rung

RECALL the flavour of Damon Runyon stories as sourly humorous, and a texture hard and dry: I don’t think my memory plays. me false. I found neither. of these in the recorded half hour of Guys and Dolls, the Américan musical reputedly based. on Runyon’s New .York stories. What I did find was the brassy, blaring fortissimo of the American musical star, in lyrics of quite exceptional triviality, and the tistial sloppy obeisancés to Luv by a squeaky soubrette, I may be unjust in judging the Whole show by a half-hour record, but it Seemed to me that everywhere the Runyon spirit had been violated, neutralised and gutted. The Americans are, v3 seems, prepared to make a musicdl of ariything, arid they all sound the same in the end: I wait apprehensively for a Hot Twelfth Night. Guys and Dolls was followed by a hdlf-hotir from American Mom’s favourite boy, Liberace, who I had never heard before. I find the adjective loathsome, both for alliteration;

and because it neatly pinions the quality of this quite horrible pianist. He began with Chopsticks variations, which somehow worked the Liszt second Hungarian Rhapsody into itself, and this was followed by what the announcer described as "The Beer Barrel Polka," but sounded exactly like the Tchaikovski Concerto in B Flat Minor, or rather, a digest of this concerto. Liberace has stated that he is not interested in the philosophy of composers but in their melodies. Acting on this high principle, he gave us the first 30 or so bars of the first movement, coupled somehow with the last 15 of the last movement. That this should then be called "The Beer Barrel Polka" struck me, in a wild way, as justice. The announcer later apologised for his error, but too late; The association is now inextricable in my mind. Piotr Ilyich! Thou ‘should’st be living at this

hour!

B.E.

G.M.