NEW MUSICAL PRODIGY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 156, 27 October 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

NEW MUSICAL PRODIGY.

COMPOSITIONS AT THREE ANJ? A

HALF YEARS OF AGE.

Paris is intensely Interested in the appearance of a new musical prodigy, a Spanish child only three and a half years old, who has marvellous natural gifts. His name Is Peplto.Rodrigues Ariola.

A year ago his mother, who is an excellent pianist herself, had been playing some classical music. She had stopped, shut the piano and gone into the next room, when she was startled to hear the piano apparently reproducing the piece she had just been playing.

Her astonishment may be conceived when she found her little Peplto in his frock and long curls seated at the piano and playing from memory with very few mistakes the piece he had just heard. From that moment the old tinkling piano became his inseparable friend. He has been offered pianos by the most celebrated manufacturers, and has always refused them with the remark, "They paralyse me." In the twelve months that have elapsed since that wonderful birth of his genius he has made incredible progress; though absolutely declining to receive any les- .■.;-., -sons., . ', ~ ■ Once when an attempt was made to press instruction upon him he left the piano In High dudgeon and retired to his toys. ■ . : He cannot read a note; yet let any one hum or whistle an air arid he plays It accurately on the piano, 'putting in an accompaniment and introducing variations In different keys. Utterly ignorant of technique, he will yet build up a little composition with which writers on,harmony themselves can find little fault.

He knows nothing of life except that it la unpleasant to be denied cake or be made to take cod-liver oil, yet into his notes he throws now a- sigh of tender melancholy, now, a' burst of passion, now a vein of reverie. : .

'So remarkable is his case that "he was taken before the Congress of Psychology, Which met last month. He appeared In a little blue frock with a lace collar, and played with entire self-possession partly well-known.airs, partly impromptus of his own, Including a military march he has dedicated to the King of Spain.

And at the close of his.recital he turned round to his grave and reverent audience and shook his curls and burst out into merry laughter.

His little hand, stretch it as he will, cannot cover more than five notes at once. Octaves are beyond him, but he makes up by playing the notes in rapid Buccession.

Everybody Is speculating on what will ba the future of this marvellous child.