An hour with Victor Borge

Press, 16 July 1980, Page 20

An hour with Victor Borge

“Victor Borge in Concert,” an hour of comedy and music, is on Network Two tonight.

Recorded live, the show features 70 musicians of the Wren Orchestra and the American coloratura soprano, Marylyn Mulvey. Fondly called “the Great Dane,” Borge has brought a new sense of joy to the once solemn classical music concert. His wit and musical gifts have made many new friends for serious music and kept old

friends corning back for more.

Borge was born in Copenhagen, and his mother introduced him to the piano when he was three years old. His father, a violinist with the Royal Copenhagen Orchestra, tried to start Victor on the violin when he was five, but after a few trying practice sessions, it was - obvious that piano ■vas Borge’s calling. At eight years Victor was recognised as a child prodigy or, as he says: “one of the those little

nuisances,” and was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Later Borge would travel to Berlin and Vienna on scholarships and study with the legendary pianists, Egon Petri and Frederic Lamond. The magic of laughter did not strike Borge until he was 15, when he discovered comedy in music. He soon rose rapidly to fame and stardom in his native Denmark and throughout Scandinavia.

He was a star of stage and screen when Nazi Germany rose over the horizon. Borge seized on the times and produced biting satire on the Nazis and Hitler. They did not share his sense of humour, and two Nazi agents ambushed him on his way home from a concert The Nazis nearly broke his fingers, but Borge escaped unscathed and luckily made the last ship to the United States out of Finland.