N.Z. Air Delights Pianist

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31680, 16 May 1968, Page 14

N.Z. Air Delights Pianist

New Zealand’s air seems so clean and healthy to Tamas Vasary, the Hungar-ian-born solo pianist who is visiting Christchurch for a concert performance tonight, that he would like to buy some.

“I have never breathed such good air as I have in New Zealand,” he said yesterday. “It may be your forests and trees, or the rivers and lakes, but it is full of flavour. “There is also a marvellous harmony between nature and man in New Zealand. In so many places in the world man has destroyed nature and built his own world. It does not seem to have happened here.” Mr Vasary is 34, and has been playing as a pianist in public concerts since he was eight He is in New Zealand as part of a world tour which began in Mexico and will take him to Australia, the Far East and London in four months. In that time he will give 100 concerts. This is only one of many extensive tours since he left Hungary after the revolution in 1956. Sometimes he has made two such tours a year, leaving him only six weeks a year to relax in his home in Switzerland.

Mr Vasary began studying music when he was six and has been playing in concerts

since he was eight; at 14 he had won six international competitions. He made his London debut in 1961, and has played with major symphony orchestras in London, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Stockholm and New York. His musical headquarters are now London and New York.

He left Hungary as a refugee just after the 1956 uprising. When he won the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium prize a few months later, he asked the Queen to help his parents leave Hungary. She did and they left a few months later. His father, a politician in a non-Commun--Ist party, had been imprisoned.

Travelling for so long, Mr Vasary finds It difficult to get time for six hours of practice each day; he has had to practice in the hours immediately before a performance because there was no opportunity earlier. One of his interests is yoga, and he tries to do exercises each day. "In the summer I substitute swimming.”

Mr Vasary will play as concerto soloist with the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra under the conductor, Juan Matteucci, tonight.