PIANO AND VIOLIN RECITAL

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 155, 27 March 1926, Page 6

PIANO AND VIOLIN RECITAL

BY MESSRS. PAGE AND LEON DE MAUNY.

Though the weather was execrable last evening, there was quite a good fxudience at the Concert Chamber, where Messrs. Bernard F. Page apd Leon De Mauny gave a delightful piano and violin sonata recital. .These able musicians, who have earned the respect and admiration of many in Wellington for their efforts in presenting only the best in music, take no small delight in occasionally departing from the well-beaten track to play sonatas which are not often heard even in the larger centres, opening fresh pages of music of a scholarly and alto n-ether interesting character. Convention was scorned last evening in the opening number, Haydn’s "Sonata in k. Majoi, a work which embodies the stately grace, fine melodic sense, and lively temperament of its composer. It. plumbs no great depths, and is not the least pretentious—it is pleasant, tunehil. period music. From 1732-1809 to 1864— is a long jump, and it is marked in ’he Sonata in'D minor of Ropartz (a pupil of the great Cesar Franck), a composer who makes no obeisance to sentimental melody, but fills his score with brave, heroic music, strenuous, complex, alive, and finely emotional in the middle movement (adagio expressive), where occurs a beautiful melody for the G string, to a lovely accompaniment. Jhe third Sonata was Gretchaninoff s Sonata in G Major,” a work of unusual distinction. It opens with a vigoroua] p.,ro—a remarkable pianoforte pint and" is followed by a tender berceuselike andante, the air of which is cleverly developed in variations of novel and arresting form, and finilly the mus>c. again in vivid contrast, becomes fantastically melo-dramatic. ending in a stun plating allegro vivace. Mr. I age show, cd in a dominating manner mastery o the pianoforte and comprehensive understanding of the music, and in Mt do Mauny"had a worthy comrade in nri Both plavers wore most heartily ap plaucled at the conclurio > of the recitn