MANY COUNTRIES CONTRIBUTE TO NOVEL CONCERT

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6612, 17 May 1928, Page 8

MANY COUNTRIES CONTRIBUTE TO NOVEL CONCERT

FOLK-SONGS, ORIGINAL WORKS ON ASSHETON-SCHWAETZ PEOGEAMME.

A musical programme that is unique will be presented at the Opera House to-night by Dawn Asshcton, England’s world-famed Colouratura Soprano and Laszlo Schwartz, Hungarian violinistcomposer, who are now on their second world tour. The programme offers compositions from almost every musical land, and is also enriched by the comments of Laszlo Schwartz, who has won fame as a conferencier and literary man.

While the aria from Traviata is well known to our music lovers, such cannot be the ease with the Hungarian, Polish, Bohemian and Eussian art and folk-songs to be introduced by Miss Assheton in her Hungarian peasant dress —a costume which is described by one critic as “a riotous rhapsody in colours.” ' Most of these quaint songs arc traditional airs v.hicn exist only in manuscript form with the English Lyrics written by Laszlo Schwartz.

The Negro Spirituals, too, have been carefully chosen to present little known examples of the musical heirlooms of the coloured race.

As to the Oriental group, the musical lover, as well as tho serious student of the art, will have a rare opportunity to hear songs from India, Java, and Burma—songs that rarely, if ever, find their way to concert programmes. There arc also classic songs of Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Japan, China, etc.

Nor is the element of novelty lessened in tho violin selections, for in his two groups of solos the Hungarian artist presents his own composition, "Ehapsodic Impromptu” for violin, a dainty caprice from his own pen, also other arrangcmcnlts unknown here. The trying accompaniments have boon entrusted to Clyde Bell. Those recitals have aroused the greatest enthusiasm wherever they have been presented in New Zealand so far. Music lovers should not miss them. If there is a land where tho magic of Dawn Asshcton’s art will fail to grip, it is yet to be fqund. . If there is a man, ■woman, or child, whoso heart does not respond to tho songs in which the joys and sorrows of tho entire world arc re-echoed by Dawn Asshcton, they are yet to be discovered. The artists come to Palmerston North after receiving ovational receptions and brilliant criticisms in Wellington, Napier and Hastings.