Accompanist Turns Soloist

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31307, 1 March 1967, Page 12

Accompanist Turns Soloist

When Maurice Till goes on to the stage of the Majestic Theatre tomorrow night to give the first recital of his New Zealand tour he will launch a new phase of his career and give music-making in New Zealand a new dimension.

As he put it himself: “It is some sort of milestone in New Zealand music when a person can just get up out of Bryndwr and do town ball recitals in the main centres.” For Maurice Till is a New Zealand-trained pianist who lives in Bryndwr and has spent most of his career in New Zealand. Usually a local musician is regarded by concert promoters as box-office poison. Usually the New Zealand pianists who give town hall recitals in the main centres are returning exiles. The situation is not peculiar to New Zealand, as Australians apparently have similar difficulties. ADVANTAGE Maurice Till has the advantage of being well-known to New Zealand concert audiences.

Visiting artists with whom he has appeared as a recital accompanist have been high in their praise. Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, on her 1964

tour, described him as one of the world’s top 10 lieder accompanists, Rita Streich wanted him to accompany her in recitals in Germany in September (he was unable to fit this in), and the Prague Quartet, with whom he gave many recitals last year, spoke of him with respect. He has also appeared with the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra as a soloist many times.

“I feel that this is the right time to come before the public as a major soloist,” said Mr Till'. “This is a development I’ve had in mind for some years.”

FUTURE PLANS He explained that be wanted to broaden his activities to the widest possible field. If this tour was successful and he was recognised as a solo recitalist he would be able to undertake others—but not too often—in future years, in New Zealand and overseas.

“I hope ,my tour will give managements the confidence to tour other New Zealanders. A lesser-known overseas artist could do a lot worse than a good New Zealander. I think we have a public in this country that will recognise a sincere artist and give him its support.

“I certainly intend to continue to reside In New Zea-

land. We have the advantage that our concert season is at a different time to the European. This means there is the opportunity to visit Europe to do something in their season, and I hope that' eventually I will be able to do this. “Access to Australia is so very easy that I’m looking to Australia for more solo engagements,” he said. COMBINED ACTIVITIES Mr Till agreed that it was quite unusual to combine, as he intended, major solo activity with a good deal of recital accompaniment

“This is the way I have to arrange a career to suit a country of this size. But there is no musical disadvantage. It is very satisfying to spend part of the year with visiting artists of the highest international reputation. “The Interchange of musical ideas on the concert platform broadens you so much. Every violinist has a different attitude to the Beethoven violin sonatas, a different way of doing things; we work out interpretation together with the result that each time the sonatas are somehing new. “I don’t want to be too dependent on others. I have to do solo work to broaden my technique and develop and show Ideas of my own, so that when I return to recital work

I will be stimulated and able to contribute much more to it” CHOPIN RECITAL On his nine-recital tour he will play an all-Chopin programme. This was decided in discussion with Sir Robert Kerridge so that the programme would have a broad popular appeal, while retaining serious musical interest. “Chopin is a composer of much greater stature than you’d think if you just heard two pieces on a programme,” said Mr Till. He has planned his programme carefully and is “delighted at the way it develops.” Maurice Till studied the piano under Clarice Bell and later under Ernest Empspn. When he started his professional career in 1949 as a pianist in a chamber music group resident at the University of Otago, his intention was to have “five years in music” and then teach mathematics, but so many recital opportunities came his way that he stayed in music. He has toured Australia three times for the Australian Broadcasting Commission and in 1964 when overseas on a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant gave concerts in Amsterdam and Stockholm, and recorded recitals in Stockholm and London. For the last four years he has been with the University of Canterbury.

Reviewing his career to date, Mr Till said: “I wouldn’t have wanted to do differently. I could have gone overseas but it has been to my advantage to have stayed. My career now has a better basis for living than that of a person who has to go at the beck and call of an agent. “I’ve been at home with my family since November. I was away to do some recitals on the West Coast, I’ve this tour coming up, then a tour with Pierre Fournier In a few months’ time, and an Australian tour in September with Kerstin Meyer. “It's not making a virtue out of necessity. It’s the type of life that suits my temperament. I can have a much more relaxed and deliberate study of music than a person making hurried efforts to- keep up with schedules and engagements.”