FIRST MALKO CONCERT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 936, 19 July 1957, Page 6

FIRST MALKO CONCERT

ON Saturday, July 27, Wellington will see three distinguished artists with the National Orchestra. These are Dr Nicolai Malko, who will conduct the concert, and the guest artists Guy and Monique Fallot. This. concert will be broadcast by all YC stations, and the programme will comprise the _ third Leonore Overture by Beethoven, the Fugue from the Quartet in C Major, Opus 59, No. 3, by Beethoven (arranged for orchestra by Dr Malko), Cello Concerto by Haydn (soloist, Guy Fallot), Piano Concerto (for two hands), by Ravel (soloist, Monique Fallot), and Theme and Variations from Suite No. 3, by Tchaikovski. In Australia Dr Malko’s first concert as Musical Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was with Ricardo Odnoposoff as soloist. For this he received a "boisterously enthusiastic’ reception after a "sensitive and musicianly interpretation." In further concerts in Sydney, Perth and Brisbane he has established himself in the Australian musical scene. One of these concerts, in the Sydney Town Hall on June 20, made history as the first symphony concert to be telecast in Australia. The works so honoured were the Rosamunde Overture of Schubert. and Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, the first half of a double concerto concert with the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. Both music and television critics were highly pleased with the telecast. The programme for Dr Malko’s second Wellington concert, on Saturday, August 10, will include Shostakovich’s First

Symphony. Dr Malko is more than usually familiar with this work, for he was a professor at the Leningrad Conservatorium when Shostakovich, who was a student there, wrote his symphony. He took it to Dr Malko, who has told the story in these words: "I don’t think Shostakovich had written much previously-a little scherzo and one or student things. Yet he suddenly wrote his first big work at 17, and made it a perfect conception. I had a little trouble getting it played. There was a bit of a fight because some of the other professors thought it better that such a young man should wait a little while. But we got over that and the first symphony was played in 1926-the second movement was ‘encored." When Dr Malko performed this work recently with the Sydney Symphony, Frank Harris, of the Sydney Daily Mirror wrote of the performance: "Malko conducted with all the devotion of a man who shared the history of a composer who has become one of the greatest of our time.": Brother and Sister Guy and Monique Fallot, the soloists, are a brother and sister team of cellist and pianist. Their New Zealand tour for the Chamber Music Societies starts in Nelson on July 24, and will continue until August 24. As well as this concert with the National Orchestra they will give two studio recitals, from Wellington on July 30, and from Christchurch on August 4. They were born at Nancy, the old capital of Lorraine, in North-east France,

and aiter starting their musical studies there, they continued them as wartime refugees in Switzerland at the Lausanne Conservatoire. In 1945, when they ‘were only 16 and 17 years old, they won the first prize for a cello and piano sonata at the Geneva Concours International. They then: returned to France for Guy to study at the National Conservatoire, while his sister was a private pupil of the noted French pianist, the late Yves Nat. In 1948 Guy Fallot won the Piatigorsky Prize for the best young French cellist. Since then the Fallot duo have played all over France and Western Europe, where they have been acclaimed as an outstanding duo. A critic wrote after their first appearance in Vienna: "If anyone is seeking the successor of Casals and Cassado, I answer: it is Guy Fallot! For him, there exists no technical difficulty, and there is a marvellously complete unity between the artist and his instrument. It is difficult to talk of Monique Fallot in terms less enthusiastic. She is not merely an accompanist, but a true partner of equal worth in the conversation of chamber music."