MORE PRODIGIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6, 7 January 1908, Page 4

MORE PRODIGIES.

Yet another mimical prodigy! Last :;.;; Monday evening London -was introduced to a really wonderful fourteen-year-old [■■; boy pianist; ■who made Ms debut at the London Symphony Orchestra Concert at Queen's Hall. Ernest Lengyel yon Bar gota, the young artist in question, is _a ,: , protege of Dr. Eichter, under whose baton he played, and the great conductor has made no mistake in his choice. Bar gota is an almost fragile looking child; indeed one would be quite prepared to -." [:;':• accept him as an eleven year old, but he has the touch and grip of maturity, arid the way he played Liszt's exacting concerto in E flat —his first piece—made.Sia I audience "sit up" with astonishment and delight. It was a "Kichter" audience pure and simple that gave vent to its'un* :'"' bounded pleasure in the child's playing, and "Richter" audiences are not easily pleased. After his second solo —BachV difficult chromatic fantasis —an ■ attempt r was made on the part of the enraptured audience to persuade young Bagota to give furthef examples of his pianistie : prowess, but though he was "called" some seven or eight times he refused to do more than bow his acknowledgments. The newest "star" is a particularly cool ■-" young customer, and "faced the music" without the faintest sign of ncrvousnesSL ':', This perhaps is not a matter for wonder, seeing that .he made his first public appearance when he was a tiny mite five years of age at Bnda Pesth, and has been ■ i. well "salted" to the concert platform ia j his native country. There can be no doubt that Bagota is a genuine "wonder" jas a youthful performer on the piano, land he bids fair to rival that brilliant young violinist Mischa Elnia in public favour. Another "prcdigy," but of vastly different calibre., has been thrust upon London this week. This is a tlurtenn-yedr , old girl earned Francis Storr, whose speciality is preaching, and who is said to ha-ve "electrified" Yorkshire. Miss Storr, the daughter of poor but hbn'esfc . ;s parents, living at Doncaster, is a bulky girl for her years. There is nothing magnetic in her personality, and her "pulpit manner" is essentially stagey. She speaks in a dull, wearisome monotone, for all the world like a child reciting a hard learned lesson, and he r j gestures are automatic, as if they had I been assimilated with the words accojnpanying them. She certainly possesses none of that fire and spontaniety that constitute a successful revivalist., and .. uses platitudes that have served indifferent "grown up" lay preachers for generations. Miss Storr's preaching indeed • I suggests much careful rehearsal rather than the inspired voice of one with * heaven-sent mission. If she "electrified I Yorkshire one can only surmise that the Tykes were badly in want of some new sensation, and were ready to-enthuse ovef - anything that was not orthodox. And, pf course, a girl preacher is soinething of a novelty, though we have buffered some dozens of boy revivalists Btt* ing the past scors of years.