KEPT HIS ENGAGEMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22999, 30 September 1936, Page 9

KEPT HIS ENGAGEMENT

FAMOUS SPANISH VIOLINIST PASSED THROUGH FIGHTING ZONE LONDON, August 12, Few who listened to Antonio Brosa’s solo at the first of the promenade concerts knew that the famous Spanish violinist had risked his life to play it. He had travelled direct from his summer cottage, 40' miles from Barcelona, through the heart of the fighting in the Spanish civil war, to keep the Queen’s Hall engagement For an hour and a-half his car ran the gauntlet of snipers in the rough foothills of the Pyrenees. Big, brown and merry, Brosa made light of his adventures “I am a musician, not a politician,” he said, “ and nobody would shoot me except by accident.” But his young English wife admitted the narrowness of their escape. “At Gerona we saw a fast car which had gone by the same road the day before completely riddled with bullets and blood-stained.” she said.

In their remote fishing village the war seemed unreal except when radio dance music was interrupted by an S.O.S. for blood transfusion volunteers or by orders to chemists to keep their shops open all night “There would nevei have been any trouble,” said Brosa. "if the priest had .iot tried to celebrate Mass secretly after giving the keys of the church to the Mayor “ The Mayor called a village meeting, which I attended, and the priest was fined 1000 pesetas by general consent. A revolutionary committee was sent to take control. “The church in another village was untouched because the priest voluntarily allowed its doors to be sealed.”