CONCERT TOUR SOON

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 133, 7 June 1945, Page 9

CONCERT TOUR SOON

ISADOR GOODMAN VISIT

No stranger to New Zealand, M. Alexandre Levitoff, the well-known Russian impresario, has arrived to devote his immediate activities to the beginning of a world tour by the famous pianist Isador Goodman, who has been in Australia for several years and who a few months ago was discharged, from the A.1.F., owing to ill health, with rank of captain, as an Army Education Service officer.

M. Levitoff has visited this country with such renowned artists as Anna Pavlova, the Don Cossacks Choir, Sergei Rachmaninoff, La Argentina, Zimbalist, and Arthur Rubenstein. Isador Goodman's previous and highly successful tour here was 11 years ago. He has been enjoying phenomenal suc-^ cess in his concerts in Australia since he started a tour there in April. After concerts in the centres and a few ot the leading provincial towns in New Zealand, starting in July, he is going to Palestine, Egypt, South Africa, Canada, South America, and the United States of America.

M. Levitoff hopes that ' later on;' when difficulties of transport, exchange, and taxation can be overcome, he will be able to bring from America world artists who have enjoyed sanctuary there during the war. Richard Farrell, formerly of Wellington, had learned all that he could from his master in Sydney, M. Svergensky, said M. Levitoff. He thought that if Farrell continued to progress as he had been doing he would be a fine artist in two or three years—he is not yet 19—if given the opportunity of acquiring from masters of the piano overseas that finesse or polish which would place him in the higher class of pianists.

M. Levitoff has been interested in the progress of younger artists in Australia and told the "Evening Post" that he was anxious to explore the possibilities of New Zealand's talent.