GOOD PIANISTS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 64, 9 December 1930, Page 3

GOOD PIANISTS

Mr Bishop’s Pupils A PLEASANT PROGRAMME One hears these days a good deal about musicianship on the part of one performer, and fluency—or technique —ou the part of the next. Occasionally it happens that both these qualities are assigntgl together. .But not enough is heard'of what can, for want of a better word, be described as the spirit, of the instrument, and the extent to which.it grips a performer. Musicianship is one tiling and velocity .mother, the selfassured critic seems to say. befoie denying one or other or both to a perfor But he blinds himself to the fact that if a performer has caught the spirit of the instrument, that performer is bound to be worth listening to. Such considerations as these may perhaps have sprung to the mind of more than one in the audience at the conclusion of the recital given last evening by the pupils of Mr. John Bishop. , , Whether it was Mr. Bishop s understanding of the pianoforte, or the faet that the programme was made up almost entirely of works by the “piano-compos-ers,” it was plain that a healthy state of pianism exists in the minds and hands of Mr. Bishop’s students. One and all a good account of themselves: some showed talent and musicianship of a high order. The programme was aware of Chopin, of course, and of Brahms, Liszt, and Schubert. Debussy. Ravel York Bowen and Rachmaninov were tne moderns, with lesser works by Stanley Wilson, a young Englishman, and Ur. Markman Lee. . - , Last evening’s programme in detail was as follows:—“Ballade m G Minor > (Brahms) and “Nocturne in Minor (Chopin); Miss Phyllis Sealy; “hantasie, G Minor” (Mozart),, Morris Solomon: 1 “Nocturne in G Minor” (Chopink “Arabesque No. 1 in E (Debussy), M ISS Christine Browne; four pieces by Stanley Wilson, Alistair Wilson; A Sunny Morning” and “March” (Markham Lee), Erie Cooper; "Rhapsodic in E Minor (Liszt), Miss Barbara Bannister; Impromptu in A Flat” (Schubert), Alan Brash; “Jeux d’Eau” (Ravel) and “Rhapsody in G Minor (Brahms). Miss Judith Giesen; “Ballade in A Flat '(Chopin), Miss Dorothy Humfy; Caprice” (York Bowen) and “Prelude in tv Minor” (Rachmaninov), Miss Eileen Roache. '