Years of Pilgrimage
| CAN’T say I thought much of the BBC journey through the tumultuous life of Franz Liszt, called Worshipper at Noon. It was a simple chronicle, with a great number of piano asides from Louis Kentner, spiced with comments from his celebrated contemporaries, Berlioz, Wagner and others. Mr. Kentner played the Liszt music to admira-
tion, but when, to illustrate a point by Berlioz, on the purity of Liszt’s style, Kentner gave us the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, I was abashed by the wilful, mannered and affected reading he gave of it. Liszt, as most people know, had two strains running through his nature, for which the words spiritual and sensual will do, forming a crux on which his whole artistic-life was based. Some investigation of this, in musical terms where necessary, would have been absorbing and entertaining. The BBC opted against this, and opted for a style which involved the reading of many private letters. They made the same error that I havé often heard on our own radio programmes, of quoting a letter in character, as if the author were speaking it. Such a device always works against conviction; nay, it out-Herods Herod. and should at all costs be
avoided.
B.E.
G.M.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 911, 25 January 1957, Page 15
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208Years of Pilgrimage New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 911, 25 January 1957, Page 15
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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