A NOTED VIOLINIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21773, 12 October 1932, Page 5

A NOTED VIOLINIST

SZIGETI ON HIS ART Fresh from a highly successful tour of Australia and some of the northern centres of the Dominion, Josef Szigeti, the celebrated violinist, now at the height of hig fame, arrived in Dunedin from the north yesterday afternoon to give two concerts in this city. Born in Budapest on September 5, 1893, Szigeti comes from a country that has produced such great violinists as Leopold Auer, Hauser, Joachim, Kemenyi, Vecsey, and Jeno Hubay, under the last of whom he studied after some preliminary tuition by hie father and an uncle. He made his first public appearance when 13 years of age at the Royal Academy, Budapest.

Appearances in Berlin and Dresden followed, and in 1907 he made his debut at Queen’s Hall, London, where his success was so great that he remained in England for nearly seven years, during which he toured the provinces many times with Busoni, Backhaus, and Melba, besides appearing frequently in London. Later he appeared with overwhelming success in every capital of Europe, while his fame spread to America and the Far East as well. In the course of an interview, Szigeti had some interesting remarks to make with regard to his experiences and also concerning his view’s on music. Last year he toured Japan, where he found that Western music had gained a remarkably strong hold on the public. “ In Tokio,” he said, " I gave six recitals on successive evenings before packed audiences. There is no other city in the world where such a thing could happen, and the apprecia-

tion I received amazed me. Nevertheless, it was a tremendous strain, and made big demands on my repertoire. It was really a history of violin music I gave, and, looking back, it seems to be one long concert lasting for six days rather than six concerts.” At my last evening there, on July 17, a very severe earthquake occurred just after I had finished the Beethoven Concerto. It shook the building alarmingly and gave me the fright of my life, but the audience behaved splendidly, the orchestra continued to play, and panic was avoided.” Turning to other subjects, Szigeti spoke of the legends that spring up around musicians, and referred in particular to that which pictures their spare time between concerts as being devoted to hours and hours of hard grinding practice to keep them at the pitch of perfection. “ There is something seriously wrong with the musician, as a musician, who requires eight or nine hours’ practice a day,” ho said. “I have never met a great musi-

cian who required to do so, and, personally, I have never spent more than two and a-half or three hours’ practice in any day, and more often much less. When I am on tour, as at present, all I do is about half an hour, but I can get a lot of benefit from half an hour’s practice.” Unlike many great artists, Szigeti does not consider that arty need to “play down” to his audience. In his opinion, public taste is high enough to trust, and to attempt deliberately to play over the heads of his listeners is just ns vulgar. He believes, and has proved it in his recitals all over the world, that people are as eager to hear Brahms and Beethoven ■as they are to listen to a rippling Slavonic dance or the dim melody of some quaint Hungarian folk song. Szigeti, whose violin is a Joseph Guarnerius, will give his first recital in the concert chamber of the Town Hall tonight.