Kipnis Separated The Sheep From The Bleats

Radio Record, 22 July 1938, Page 6

Kipnis Separated The Sheep From The Bleats

; N this outspoken article by a music-loving contributor, O. H. Murcfield, the question is asked, why New Zealand audiences for Alexander Kipnis have not filled the city Town Halls, The answer may not be flattering, but at least it is provocative.

OR years New Zealanders have listened with goodhumoured complacency to strangers telling them that theirs is a

land without culture or deep thinking. For years they have smilingly agreed and brought out their answer, pat: "What can you expect in a country like ours-small, sparsely populated, far from the world’s centres of thought and education?" Then, for years, with a hint of self-pity. they have murmured: "You see, nobody comes to teach us. Our finest brains leave us to seek opportunity overseas. Musical or dramatic artists who come here are past their prime, never put on their best performances for us. How can we rival the Old World in culture?"’ It all used to seem to me so very much a vicious circle. I was sorry for the poor New Zealanders who longed to be uplifted and could find no one strong enough to raise them. I tealised their desire was genuine, their need real. I railed against the fate that set them so far from possible hope of salvation. I wept and gnashed my teeth with them, praying for the cultural experiences that were denied us by mere distance. But that pity and that anger are dead now. For the first time I see my own countrypeople for what they are-a people of Rugby enthusiasms and comfortable ways, who like their culture fed to them £

from a spoon like emulsion, but who will have none of it if the taste is bitter or the bottle stands on a high shelf. Alexander Kipnis is the

man who has, for me, separated the sheep from the bleats . This Russian basso, who has been touring the Dominion for the NBS, is not perhaps as great an artist as the "Record" critic, "‘Scherzo,"" would have us suppose. But this at least is certain: he is in the top flight of artist-visitors to New Zealand. A better basso, Chaliapin, was here once, long ago, but Chaliapin ‘was an old and tired man then. Alexander Kipnis is practically the only singer of world class that has visited New Zealand at the very height of his power. He is the only artist who has come on a New Zealand stage with every sign of enjoying his art and the effort of giving it the best that is in him-no matter whether his audience be in Covent Garden or the Wellington Town Hall. And yet this distinguished singer has been heard in three main centres-Auckland is yet: to come-by half-size audiences. Why? The reason, for once, cannot be sought in lack of money. The NBS prices have been phenomenal in the history of high-grade entertainment in New Zealand. The cost of two picture shows-less than the cost of a ring seat at a wrestling match-would have given anyone the chance to hear Kipnis. Why did so few take the chance? (Continued on opposite page.)

(Continued from opposite page). Was the reason lack of knowledge? dven thut excuse does not stand examination. Kipnis came here practically unannounced, largely unpublicised. But once he had come every newspaper and magazine in the country shouted his praises-every person who heard him agreed that here indeed was true musical gold. Yet neither critics’ panegyrics nor word-of-mouth recommendations did much to fill the Town Halls. . Maybe, then, we may blame the radio for the small attendances: Was the Kipnis audience sitting at home? One cannot believe even that pretence. People who enjoy wrestling prefer to see rather than hear their matches; the lightsome Comedy Harmonists had no difficulty in coaxing people out of doors; Rugby fans turn out in their thousands on the bitterest winter day. Why did Kipnis fail to draw his fol-lowing-Kipnis who was fifty times better to watch than just to hear? Did the misery of New Zealand Town Halls deter the music-lovers? One is reminded of Arthur Bliss speaking of concert halls in England: "If there is a policy in which cinemas have shown the way, it is in the matter of comfort. To go to the average concert-hall is to exchange luxurious eas: for a penitential rigour. If at the end of a day’s work you have to choose between the armchair or the wooden plank, which calls you? Apparently it was the armchair, nearly every time, that called the vociferous, lip-serving music-lovers of New Zealand. For once the blame has come to the right door. It is not the artists but the audiences who are responsible for the way in which Culture shuns the Pacific!