PIANIST'S COURSE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29206, 17 May 1960, Page 11

PIANIST'S COURSE

Lecture-Recital Series

A perlea of lecture-recitals on piano music by. the New Zealand concert piantat, Peter Cooper, will make an unusual and Interwting tagluKlAflaMta AAte,* —*■— -—a ~' w eta .i this month. The aortas of fivealike, will be given to Begg’s concert hall from May II to». Mr Cooper haa given atmllar aeries of lecture-recitals in Wellington, Palmerston North, and

The first lecture, on the baric principles of piano-playing, will be a technical survey illustrated by studies written by Cserny, Chopin, Llazt and Saint-Saena. The second, entitled “The Nature of the Piano as an instrument," will show the development of keyboard music from Elizabethan composers to the present day, with examples by Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninov, John Ireland, and John Vallier. The third recital will be devoted to the music of J. S. Bach. The programme will consist of the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, the English Suite in A minor, and selections from the 48 Preludes and Fugues—the “old testament of the piano’’—as well as Busoni’s transcription for the piano of organ chorale-preludes and the violin Chaconne. The piano’s “new testament"— Beethoven’s 32 sonatas—will be the subject of the fourth programme, which has been designed to show the characteristic style of the works from Beethoven’s early, middle and late periods. The three sonatas Mr Cooper will play are No. 7 in D major, Op. 10, No. 3; No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 (the “Appassionato”), and the last (and, many think, the greatest) sonata, No. 32 in C minor, Op. 11. The final recital will deal with the musical association between two of the greatest composers of their day, Liszt and Wagner. The musical examples, all bv Liszt, will be "Venezia," “La Lugubra Gondole,” Sonata in B minor, and a transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner’s "Tristan und Isolde.”