Kentner Refuses To Specialise

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31028, 6 April 1966, Page 18

Kentner Refuses To Specialise

Commenting on his vast repertoire, which ranges from pre-Bach to Bartok, the distinguished Hungarian pianist Louis Kentner said in an interview in Christchurch yesterday: “It’s simply a matter of having Catholic tastes.”

Mr Kentner last toured New Zealand in 1953. With the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra under Franz-Paul Decker, he will be the soloist this evening in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A. K. 488.

"I was never happy to become a specialist of any sort,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a good thing to limit oneself. Playing the piano is already a limitation.”

Bom in Silesia 60 years ago, this “pianist in the grand manner” was introduced to the piano when he was only three or four years old by his mother and father. At the age of six he became a pupil at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, where his teacher was Arnold Szekely. “But I consider myself almost 90 per cent self-taught," he said.

He also studied composition with Leo Weiner, Zoltan Kodaly, and Hans Koessler, whose pupils included Dohnanyi, Bartok, and most of the younger school of Hungarian composers. Debut In Teens Mr Kentner made his concert debut in his early teens, and had played all the 32 Beethoven sonatas before he was 20. “I made myself a plan, to learn one of the sonatas every week . . . It’s like memorising the Bible, or something of that sort.” In fact, it took two years to learn them all. he said. “Ever since then I have been learning and relearning them. If I sat down today and played them I would discover things I had never found before.” In his youth he also played Bach, Haydn, Mozart—especially Mozart. “I consider his concert! are his most miraculous achievement. “I came to the Romantic composers later in life, except for Schuman: Schuman was an early love, but it didn’t last long. Schuman attacks you like a rash—you ‘come out’ in Schuman, and adore his music almost to the exclusion of greater composers. . .

“Liszt was always there, latently—l suppose because I’m a Hungarian originally.

The air in Hungary was always permeated with Liszt. Today I like him even more than I did a few years ago; I’m fond of even the less valuable, less original works. Liszt has stayed with me all my life, and Chbpin, too.” Bartok and Kodaly were the first “modern” composers who appealed to him. He gave the first Budapest performance of Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with Klemperer conducting, and the first European performance of the second piano concerto. Singled Out

Bartok had given the first performance of the Concerto No. 1 a few days earlier, again with Klemperer conducting, in Frankfurt, but for some reason did not want to play it in Budapest. Instead, he singled out the young Louis Kentner for the honour. “He came to all the rehearsals. He sat there and never said a word. All he did was take out a little pocket metronome from time to time and dangle it in the air.” During his New Zealand tour Mr Kentner will be playing Kodaly’s “Marosszek Dances,” written for him when he was a pupil of the composer. “I learnt them on the day of the first performance,” he said. When he went to Kodaly’s home about & a.m. he

was handed a sheet of paper and taken into the diningroom, where there was no piano. “Sit down on the sofa and learn it,” Kodaly said, and then went to the piano in the drawing-room and continued composing the work, handing in each sheet of manuscript as he completed it. By lunch the work was finished. Mr Kentner took it home, practised it, memorised it, and gave the first performance that evening. Move To England After he moved to England in 1935, Mr Kentner gave first performances of Tippett and Rawsthorne piano concerti, and, with Yehudi Menuhin, his brother-in-law, Walton’s sonata for violin and piano. The last work was dedicated to the musicians’ wives. Tonal-row compositions are not included in Mr Kentner’s twentieth-century repertoire. “I’m afraid I can't go along with the 12-tone boys ... I don’t think it will ever appeal to me.” ! While one could appreciate the structure of the music when one studied the score one could not follow it with the naked ear, he said. “That’s what I’ve got against it.” Even this would not be a decisive factor if one simply enjoyed the sound of the music. “But I don’t,” Mr Kentner said. 4