GIFTED PIANIST

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 241, 8 July 1938, Page 7

GIFTED PIANIST

Recital By Madam Elsie

Betts-Vincent

The pianoforte recitals of Madam Elsie Betts-Vineent are not only au artistic joy. They are a deep well of authenticated information about the composers she is exploiting, their nature and characteristics, and the nature of their music ■—the emanation of a mind richly stored with musical lore. This does not mean that other recitalists could not act similarly; but, as a rule, they don’t. Without an atom of self-consciousness, and with freedom of illustration and anecdote, Madam Betts-Vincent invests her recitals with an aura of her own creation, one of immeasurable value to the student and of interest to the every-day music lover. Last evening’s recital at Nimmo’s Hall, Wellington, was no exception to this rule. In announcing the “Carnaval” of Schumann, which she played with light-hearted insouciance, she told how this composer excelled iu little pieces. He had wonderful invention, a gift for melody, and bubbled with ideas, but his sense of form was not strong; besides, his music for the most part only employed the central section of the pianoforte, whereas Chopin, the greatest of all composers for the instrument, employed the whole keyboard with the greatest brilliance. The “Carnaval” is a clever series of little pictures, which give play the composer’s scuse of imagery, diverse in colouring and style, but nothing “big,” nor any pretence to” it, except perhaps the rhythmical “Davidsbundler” march at the end, which is Schumann in the role of David defying the Phillistiues. Madam Betts-Vineent, whose commanding technique gives the impression that it is all so easy, was particularly brilliant in the Chopin bracket, which included the popular “Fantasie in F Minor,” the delightful Scherzo in E, so seldom heard, and quite a major work in the difficulties it presents, and the charming Etude in A Minor, a total gem in its way. ’ , The following bracket, very happily contrasted music, included Rachmaninoff s languid Prelude in G (major), which is ever so remote from the insistent C sharp minor or even the G minor, showing the Russian pianist-composer in placid mood. Then in flaming beauty came the Rhapsody in C of the Hungarian composer Dohnanyi, a fiery work of remarkable brilliance and very characteristic. The “Staceato Study” of Edith Greenup, played with an elastic touch, is one of those never-let-up perpetuo pieces which display facility. By way of contrast Madam Betts-Vin-cent played the atmospheric. “Collogue au Clair de Lune,” a languorous love scene

in the light of_the moon. The composer was Pick-Mangiagalli, an Italian of talent, to judge him by this piece and the sparkling “Danse d'Olaf,” which consists mostly of elfin ripples employing the top third of the keyboard very cleverly. Other items of picturesque variety were “The Girl and the Nightingale'.’ (Granados). “Triana” (Albeniz), and the “Naila 1 ' valse of Delibes, transcribed for the pianoforte by Dohnanyi. The musical education of everyone present was advanced by this interesting recital.