TALENTED YOUNG PIANIST

Evening Star, Issue 25462, 18 April 1945, Page 9

TALENTED YOUNG PIANIST

I MISS CARA HALL'S RECITAL .Recollections of a delightful concert in Dunedin nearly a year ago ensured for Miss Cara Hall a large and' enthusiastic audience when she gave another piano recital in the Concert Chamber last night. And her listeners were not disappointed, because Miss Hall has very considerable talents which, combined with a charming manner, captivated the audience. She is still a very young performer, but she lias already gone a long way towards mastering her instrument, and as she gains a deeper insight into the emotional content of music her artistic development may bring her into prominence as a solo pianist. It was no mean performance for one of her years to present a full programme of entirely memorised music, and to go through it with such assurance. Perhaps her greatest talent was the marked clarity of her playing. Each note was crystal clear and crisp, but that admirable quality rather tended to emphasise a lack of colour and expression. But in a young player technical accomplishmolts, which she has in abundance, outweigh the finer shades of interpretation. At her present age her playing could be expected to be maturing rapidly, and not a few in the audience probably indulged in speculative comparisons with their recollections' of last year's concert. With the exception of some items which.proved particularly popular last year, the programme chiefly cdmprised music Miss Hall has not played here before. Whether or not the audience really wanted to hear Beethoven's ' Moonlight' Sonata, it is almost inevitable in a programme of piano music. At the head of the programme, it served to establish i|he player's chief talents—marked clarity of tone, a sound rhythmic sense and a preference for straight performance rather than romanticism. The brilliant magnesium flash which dazzled the audience near the end of the sonata could not by any stretch of imagination be confused with moonlight, and was, no doubt, something far less romantic. In a Bach group, the beautiful chorale ' Sheep May Safely Graze ' was somewhat hurried, but a gigue and a minuet were played with grace and charm. Miss Hall played admirably Brahms's early Scherzo in E Flat Minor. A trifle more sophistication would have added charm to Mozart's ' Facile ' Sonata in C, but the pianist captured the grace of this delightful little work. In modern selections, she showed real brilliance, Debussy's whimsical ' Homage to Mr Pickwick ' and the colourful ' Fireworks ' being played with astonishing technique and tonal mastery. The marked individuality of Serge Prokofieff shone through an elegant if eccentric Gavotte. A Negro Dance by Nathaniel Dett was also a fine technical achievement. Concluding with Chopin, Miss Hall played four of the Preludes, and gave a massive performance of the big A Flat Polonaise. Encore numbers included the Arpeggio Study by Chopin, and Bach's ' Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.'