CHAMBER MUSIC

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 16, 13 October 1933, Page 6

CHAMBER MUSIC

Enjoyable Trio Recital A TSCHAIKOVSKY GEM Chamber music is for the few, but even that few in Wellington was not sufficient to more than half fill Nimmo’s Hall last evening, when a trio recital was given by Mr. and Mrs. Leon de Mauny and Mr. Claude Tanner. This is to be regretted, but seemingly that regret will not mend matters. The recitalists presented a really good standard of performance, and if one loves music for its own sake as well as the emotional thrills it engenders in the sensitive mind, such recitals are a real pleasure. There were only two trios on the programme. The first was the scholarly Trio in D Minor of Schumann —a difficult work, covering a comprehensive range of colourful music of a forcible, rather than a romantic character, and yet veined with elusive contrapuntal beauties that are for the musician rather than the common ear. Perhaps the performers reached their highest standard in the great Trio in A Minor of Tscchaikovsky, an amazing work in which the composer flaunts bis elastic genius by demonstrating the many forms in which a simple theme may be moulded. This theme, a simple hymmil form, is first given out by the solo pianoforte, after which it changes colour and tempo and mood at the will of its creator —it becomes romantic, dramatic, poetic. It pleases as a pastorale, tickles as a musical box oddity, romps as a mazurka, marches as a stately processional, and finally, with great impressement, figures as a majestical funeral poem. The players appreciated every mood, and were accorded a well-deserved ovation for the fervent artistry dispklSfld. Mr. Claude Tanner, accompanied by Madame Evelyn de Mauny, displayed a strong tone of fine texture in the Choral Prelude of Bach (arranged by Zoltan Kodafly, which calls for legato bowing only, and In the more variable and Imaginative “Celtic Hymn” (Granville Bantock) gave a good account of himself. Mr. and Sirs, de Mauny were heard in that very fine Sonata in D of Cesar Cui, a Russ(aq composer of eminence in the Victorian age, whose music is not heard so frequently as in the last century. The Sonata is a sound one musically, and was admirably played. The vocal soloist of the evening was Mrs. Anna Ginn, whose taste in song is impeccable. Her selection consisted of “Through the Night” (Hugo Wolf). “All Souls’ Day” (R. Strauss), and "D’un Prison” (Hahn), each one a gem of song, and sung with a full appreciation of their poetic worth and musical beauty.