APPLAUSE THAT WAS SWEETEST

Radio Record, 8 July 1938, Page 9

APPLAUSE THAT WAS SWEETEST

Quiet Vorce of Toscanini Meant Most of All To | Alexander Kipnis OS,

By

EMILE

LEXANDER KIPNIS stood in the bow of the piano in the Wellington Town Hall last week acknowledging the ‘sustained applause of an audience that did not want to let him go. Alone, on a bare stage, in a great ice-chest of au ugly building, he had held his audience rapt for two and a.half hours. by the magic of his artistry. They had heard him sing the charming’ little songs of Brahms, the diabolic: courting: song of Mephistopheles’ in oR aust," Russian | folk-songs that spoke strangely of the joys and sorrows of the peasants, and the rich gem of "The Gentle Lady" aria from Mozart’s "Don Giovanni." The applause rattled uuceasingly from the front stalls, the pit and the circle. He seemed pleased with the response to his art, smiled,.sang a quaint little modern song for them. UT I knew that, of all the applause he had received in every part of the world, there was nothing dearer to him than the memory of a small

man with brilliant eyes who, after hearing him sing a duet with Lotte Lehmann, had remained silent for @ long half-minute, had at last taken his hands from his puzzled eyes, and murmured very softly: "How beautiful. this music was!" The little man was Toscanini. ".. The greatest conductor who has ever lived," Alexander Kipnis told me. "I do not think there will ever be another as great as he. When you are singing with him you'-s¢em .to lose your respect for all the others’in the world. He can be so simple ‘and he can be so touched by music." — POSCANTNT, says Kipnis, is. deyoted to Wagner "like nobody," but he does not like Fascist countries. He gives up conducting in any country which turns’ Fascist. When Austria was taken by: Germany he immediately gave up conducting for- the Kestival-at Salzburg. : J, too," said ‘Kipnis; "gave Salzburg." to

"WVHEN one man raises his arm in conducting,’ it means nothing, but when Toscanini makes a movement it means everything." "When he is conducting he draws the music from the singer. There is no resistance. It is like a physical touch, some magnetism. . . . He will come to conduct an orchestra of 120 people in Vienna and an enormous chorus, and they follow him like people-in a fairy tale." . oe Alexander Kipnis paused, and then summed that all up in a striking phrase: ° "When he is there, everybody’s heart is beating’ much louder." ALEXANDER KIPNIS smiled happily at a recollection. . It had. been after a rehearsal for a festival and he _ himself was standing outside the theatre. There were many people waiting there.’ Toscanini came out to get in "hig car. On the pavement stood Kipnis, taking a moving film of the conductor entering his car. Toscanini saw him, stepped out of the car and

bowed. . "Then he called me over, aud in the presence of everybody he gently stroked my cheek." (CHALIAPIN was in Salzburg, tuo, last summer, and one knew then, says Kipnis, that he would never sing again. One could read in his face, that he was going to die. The two men had sung together often. And, though some might say that Wipnis rivals Chaliapin, there was no hint of this in his tribute: "I consider him the greatest operatic singer and actor who has ever lived. Nobody at the present time can be compared with him. "He was a human being in- the fullest sense of the word. He had all the greatiess that Nature can give to a human-being; and-aH*the weaknesses. | .... "Tolstoi once said, ‘Show me a human being like an angel, and 1 am ‘going to hate. _AContd.on Dage -.86-)

Sweetest Applause | TOSCANINI AND -CHALIAPIN © (Continued from page 9.) him’ Chaliapin was one ‘Tolstol loved." [ they played poker with Chaliapin with a shilling limit, said Kipnis, smiling, and Chaliapin lost two — shillings "he was wild about that." He. told jokes like nobody else, he acted them, Each joke he played like an actor on a stage, Once when they were giving Russian opera at Chicago and Chaliapin was bored, he turned at the end of a song to face his valet in the wings and sang on the same note, in the Russian that only the players could understand, "Go te my hotel and get two bottles of wine there, I want te drink them as soon as this damned opera is over," URING his recent tour of Australia, ~ Alexander Kipnis told me, he met another singer with whom he had an unusual association, That was Kirsten Flagstad, now world-famous, the Norwegian singer who is soon to tour New Zealand. For 15 years she had been an obscure singer, known only in Scandinavia. Six years ago Kipnis went to Oslo to take part in opera, and heard her voice. He was astonished at its quality and astonished still more to find that for 15 years she had been singing in comparative obscurity. He arranged for her to haye an audition at Berlin. She was immediately engaged there for opera, When he next went back to Scandinavia, he told me, the newspaper headings did not say, "Alexander Kipnis is here." _They said: "Discoverer of Flagstad Arrives,’ ,