ARTIST WHO DEFIES

Radio Record, 1 July 1938, Page 10

ARTIST WHO DEFIES

Gave His First Audition He Was in-a Concentration

Record Interview

by

EMILE

'N the age of machine mass production, the true artist alone challenges the cheapening of standards. Alexander Kipnis, world-famous bass, now on tour for the NBS, has given his life to this ideal. Though it is easier to win the handclaps of the’ many by the singing of a cheap little song, he refuses to give people anything but the best his gifts can offer. How will the public respond in New Zealand? on!

EDIUM of height, sallow in complexion, _ with brilliant and vital brown eyes, overscored with heavy dark eyebrows, Alexander Kipnis was trying over his songs with the accompanist for his New Zealand tour, Noel Newson, in the NBS lounge. ‘As he sang, the glorious bass voice not held in check so much as modulated to a quiet flow of sound, he swayed from one foot to the other. The time of the music, you could see, was running through his brain and into his bgdy. His eves. lit un. his

big. head went. back as his mouth split in a mighty. laugh: ’ "Fra, ha, hal’ Wie was singing one of his songs that will make all New Zealand listen, the "Song of The Flea." It made you tingle to hear it. HERR . HITLER has done New Zealand a good ‘turn. Alexander Kipnis

had much of his musical . training in Germany, and he loves the operas of ‘Wagner and the songs of Schubert. But, like Toscannini, the conductor whom he adores, he does not care for Fascism. When he was in Australia a few months ago, he was due to return te a season in Austria. When the German troops marched’ across the border and entered Vienna, Alexander Kipnis cancelled his Austrian ° Season, He decided to come on to New Zealand: instead, During his engagement to tour with the NBS, New Zealand listeners will hear the voice of the world- famous bass who lives for his singing, to whom "Art for Art’s sake" is no. horribly trite platitude, but a deep reality. AN because Hitler's generals marched on to Austria,

T was his fate, he told me last week, to be born in Southern Russia, in a house which cared nothing for music. Until he was 13 or 14 years old he did hot sing, or touch a piano. tos Yet,-somehow, music was born in him. . .. He. remembers clearly .how much the Russian folk songs meant to him. At the age of four or five-years he would sing them all, and often he was so touched by his own singing of them that tears would come into his . eyes. . CF "My mother," he. said, smiling, "used to say, ‘What. are you erying ‘for? Has.someone hurt you?’ ! would say to her, ‘I am crying at my own songs. The songs seemed so sad to me that I had to ery." HIS father died when he was still young, and his- family tried to make him follow in his father’s footsteps as a merchant. He knew he must follow music. ey "J left my mother and got away. I had my shirt, ‘my one suit, and my hat. One day I was no longer there. ," I left a note to say, ‘Good-bye, I am_going to study music. HE went to Warsaw and had a difficult time supporting himself; While he was a student there he sang in choirs to earn his food. But his voice began to grow, and : ‘ hig passion for Wagner.

Urged on by the Ppas-sion:-inside him. for further study, he decided to ‘leave Warsaw. He must go.to Germany or to Italy. . He went to the station and--. said: "Where -is the first train going?’ . The station officials told him: "To Berlin." He said: "Give me a ticket to Berlin." _’ That was how he turned out ‘to become an interna tional

« singer, trained on the German stage. He would have been a singer of the Ttaliags stage-if the first train had been Seine. to Milan. ALEXANDER KIPNIS was iti Germany when’ the. war broke out. As a Russian subject, he was. put into a concentration camp with English, French and’ other Rus: sians. . "There," he-told. me, "I was:again sad, I: sang there, because I was sad. The German colonel of. the camp was very musical, and he heard me singing." The colonel said: Are you: a singer. by profession + Kipnis said: No, I am a student; The colonel said: My brother is. the general. manager of the State Opera House at Wiesbaden. Would you not dike to sing. there? focaygsy :