First Equal

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 885, 20 July 1956, Page 17

First Equal

J "i [7 is my pleasure this week to salute a really fine artist, Paul BaduraSkoda. This admirable young pianist is well known in this country through his recordings and his personal appearance therefore aroused the liveliest expectation, He played first the Mozart Concerto in E Flat, with the National Orchestra, from Auckland. I cannot ptaise too highly the purity and freedom of his, Mozart style, beautifully clear, with every note articulate, and every phrase rounded and shapely. I wish I could say the same of the orchestra whose perfunctory accompaniment amounted to the worst playing I have heard frony them this year. Some of the horn passage work was quite awful, the sections did not always synchronise, and when they did, their great walloping tuttis were offensive to the ear. BaduraSkoda next gave a solo recital in Wellington, offering a superbly original programme, with the Bach Italian Concerto, one of the last three Beethoven sonatas, the Op. 109, the Sonata in B Flat, by Hindemith, and a second half entirely of Schumann, the F Sharp Minor Sonata and as an encore, surprisingly, the Scenes from Childhood. BaduraSkoda seems incapable of making an ugly sound, and the lyrical freshnegs of his approach to the Bach and Beethoven made some passages more eloauent then I have ever heard them. The Hindemith is, I suspect, a work of great sophistication and irony; the pianist perhaps missed some of its ironical passages, but he made it sound splendid fun. Perhaps he reached his peak with Schumann, which he plays with a fine Viennese sparklé, and a wonderful youthful blandness. So different from Julius Katchen, with whom irresistibly he must be compared. Comparison between them, however, breaks down as soon as attempted, because each inhabits a unique world; but together, thev would seem to sweep the emotional

pool,

B.E.G.

M.