LONDON AT PLAY

Evening Star, Issue 19765, 16 January 1928, Page 1

LONDON AT PLAY

FAMOUS ARTISTS AT HOTELS. The calm of London on Sabbath evening is comparable with that of Thrums, it is sneered at by the cosmopolitans; it is unrelieved tedium to those who have never had enqugh to da to make them enjoy doing nothing. With an eye to this clientele Mayfair Hotel has invented the dinner concert, thus striking a happy medium between the British conception of Sunday observance (which permits of much food and a little music) and the Continental disregard of it. The first dinner concert was held on Sunday, and consisted of two hours of dinner and one and a-ha!f of concert. One passed from the cavaire and the iced pudding, not to mention the intervening courses, to the company of Paclimann and a piano. It was not possible to have the dinner without the concert, or the concert without the dinner, and the net cost of both was 30s a head. The gross cost naturally involves an increment, for, although good wine needs no bush, good food deserves good wine. This to indicate that the dinner concert, as it presents itself at its inception, is not a cheap form of whiling away a Sundry evening; some day the idea may be developed on a less expensive scale. Throughout the winter, however, tire Mayfair is maintaining these weekly events, and a truly remarkable display ol artists—including Krcisler, Elena Gerhardt, and Cortot—has dieen engrged. But Paclimann was a splendid dtaw to inaugurate the new form of entertainment, for he is not only a musical genius, but he is also incredibly eccentric. The concert did not begin until after 10, and the little ole man should have been safely tucked in bed long before then. “.1 am very, very old,” ho told the audience. “ 1 ait over seventy-nine, and i am so tired. They turned down the lights, ani he asked for more; they gave him too much, and he asked for less. The audience laughed and applauded. He s;r, down at the piano, struck a chord, aixl sprang from the seat. “The piano!” he cried. “It is not straight! 1 cannot play up and down a hill!” Be waved his arms, and seven huge fl in keys in knee breeches and blue trappings rushed to the rescue, and ■placed'a small folded piece of paper beneath a piano leg. Paclimann sat dewn again; a spray of notes came from his right hand. “Ah!” he sighed with satisfaction, “ but it is < a good piano.” His old, worried brain found a'haven in Chopin, for liis thoughts njn with still incomparable lucidity through his fingers. Nevertheless, he must trjlk about them to his audience. “This,” he said of one etude, “is vary, vary difficile. Some artists they play it this way, that way, hands go up and down, across one another. _ Not I; I keep in the meedle. My friends they tell me my technique is for all tine—like the goodness of lebonDien!” And.the little old man with the bathchair physique and the fingers of nnsufpasscd agility played on till they led him away to his bed.