SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22904, 11 June 1936, Page 12

SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

NOTABLE CHILD PIANIST TO PLAT The Dunedin Symphony Orchestra’s second seasonal concert next Wednesday evening promises to provide something in the nature of a sensation in the .featured debut of the remarkable Christchurch child pianist, Wynne Lorraine Simpson, who is to .be heard in a work that calls for exhibition of the highest technical prowess. ,• This is the great Liszt Pianoforte Concerto No. ,1 (E Flat major), rightly counted as one of the superb masterpieces of virtuoso' musiS. This girl of 14 years astonished critics and the public with her performance of this same concerto for the Christchurch Liedefkranzchcn Society recently, winning from its conductor, Mr Alfred Worsley, thq that she had possibilities as a world artist, while the critics lavished praise not only upon her abundant technical equipment, but also upon the fine imagination displayed in her interpretation. It would seem, therefore, to be assured ■ that Dunedin patrons who hear her under the baton of M. de ’ Rose, will have the pleasure of appraising an artist destined to become no inconsiderable figure in the pianhrtic world.

The facts of the child’s public career, showing ah unbroken list of triumphs in competitive work, are worth setting down. She began piano study in Auckland at the early age of five years, and at seven years and a-half was silver and bronze medallist, the adjudicator at Auckland tMadame Grace Griffiths) remarking upon the very intellectual interpretation given by so young a child. Five years later, Mr Vernon Griffiths, in awarding her tha Wellington Competition Society’s scholarship, expressed his amazement at the technical achievement displayed, and his. particular pleasure at the child’s sense of musicianship. Still more convincing from the point of view of public performance were her outstanding successes at the National Eisteddfod in 1935, when she won the championship gold medal (21 years and under), championship and gold medal (18 and under), and was pLced first in the 12 and under 14 years section. This is certainly an unexampled record, and the Symphony Orchestra’s Programme Committee gives her the featured position with confidence that patrons will acclaim the child the greatest attraction of the season’s concerts.

The orchestra will play ns chief items trvo little-known but exceedingly powerful symphonic poems Smetana’s “ Vltava,” and Augusta Mary Holmes’s “Andromeda and the Storm King,’’ the latter a fine example of the French school, with the colours laid on with lavish hand.

The vocalist of the occasion will be Miss Angela Hendry (contralto), and the concert will bo Mven in the Concert Chamber, Town Hall.