EMINENT PIANIST HERE

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 145, 21 June 1926, Page 9

EMINENT PIANIST HERE

ON WAY TO AUSTRALIA.

TRINITY EXAMINER ARRIVES

Herr Wilhelm Backhaus, eminent German pianist, whose name and fame are coupled with those of Paderewski, is a through passenger by the Niagara, which arrived in Auckland this morning. He is on hi? way to fulfil -concert engagements in Australia, after which he will come to New Zealand to play. He is accompanied by his wife.

In September, October and November of last year. Backhaus completed a succussful tour of England, and then went on to America. He also played in Havana. This, is his first visit to Australia, and he ie looking forward to it eagerly, having been promised a good time by friends he has in the Commonwealth. He expects to be there for two or three months, and will start his tour in Sydney, with ten recitals, in July.

Backhaus first viEited England when he was sixteen years of age, anc has been playing at Home intermittently for the'last twenty-five years, giving recitals eacli winter throughout the country and in America. He is a great friend of the Xew Zealand singer, Rosina Buckman. and was on tour with her in England. He thinks that some day he might come out here with her. Hβ also had many tours with Madame Melba. On arrival this morning v • was wearing a tie pin she gave him as a token of her friendship.

• Speaking of Iris Ameri< ".n expei-iences, ■the master said that the most .notices - ble thing in the States was the manner in which the rich citizens were taught that it was their duty to spend thousands of dollars for the furtherance ot music by assisting orchestras, endowing schools of music, and so on. In America to-day, he said, there was a musical "beginning to something great that might be achieved in ten or twenty years jazz kilied the classics. He 'did ngt.ihihk that was possible, bnl he said ttiai jazz was a force to bo contended with.

. In New Zealand, as in Australia, the jaanist's programmes wilt be made up largely of selections from Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann. He is booked for Vienna, in January next, and also has invitations to go to Russia, which is beginning to recover sufficiently enough from the resolution to induce artiets to go there. To show the progress made he said that Moscow already had a very big orchestra without a conductor.

Another interesting , musical arrival by the Niagara was Mr. Ronald Chamberlain. 8.A., Mus-Bac, F.R.C.G., AJLA.M., and examiner from Trinity College of Music, London, who is to conduct musical and elocutionary examinations in the North Island of New Zealand. He will spend six months here, five weeks of which he will be in Auckland. He will then leave to take examinations* - in Victoria, Australia.