SHURA CHERKASSKY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20522, 25 September 1928, Page 13

SHURA CHERKASSKY.

The astosdshinng young Russian pianist, Shura Cherkassky, who will give three recitals in His Majesty’s Theatre on Monday, October 8, and Wednesday and Thursday, October 10 and 11, has been repeating his Australian triumphs in Wellington. Reviewing his second concert there, the Dominion says: “ Another large audience was sent into ecstasies over the playing of Shura Cherkassky at the Town Hall last night. Here and now the idea should be firmly dispelled that the newcomer is simply a gifted boy with an aptitude for the pianoforte. Though a lad in years, Shura Cherkassky has ascended Pclion’s heights, and has by the God-given genius within him, attained a place among the stars. No music ever written for the pianoforte is beyond the scope of his magical fingers; none of its inner beauties is missed by his poetic understanding. He is a master of the keyboard in the same sense as Paderewski, Hoffmann, and Rachmaninoff, and that with a lifetime yet before him. The programme of last evening was a model one. Once more the pianist displayed his amazing maturity as a complete artist in his interpretatoin of John Sebastian Bach—the rock on which many a player has come to grief. On this occasion it was the majestic, almost awe-inspiring “ Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue.” Bach has thrown into this work the might of his genius, and its youthful expositor reflected the glory of its thunderous message and brilliant contrapuntal comlexitics with an incisiveness and dynamic force, that was tremendously stimulating. His treatment of the fugue was radiant in its delicate tracery, illuminated and graced by the finest of touches and tone. Following came the “ Moonlight Sonata ” of Beethoven, so familiar, yet ever beautiful, in its sweeping changes of mood, from the cool. Quiet, limpidity of the first movement, which flows like a liquid-beni-son upon the ears, to the later passionate and torrential passages, which call for physical effort _of no ordinary kind, as well as dramatic intuition. The bos plan arrangements are advertised.