SECOND CONCERT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26416, 21 March 1947, Page 6

SECOND CONCERT

LEO CHERNIAVSKY . INTERESTING PROGRAMME Dunedin audiences would furnish promising material for psychological research. The temperature of Mr Leo Cherniavsky’s audience for his second recital last night was several degrees warmer than on Tuesday evening, when the performer expressed his surprise that an audience could be so unresponsive and cold. This was apparent from the very first item, The Devil’s Trill,” by Tartini, a remarkable work which attempts to describe the composer’s vivid and terrible experiences when he dreamed that the devil had taken possession of his soul. The cadenza, with its truly diabolical trills, was played with. great vitality and skill. . _ The Max Bruch Concerto in G minor was notable for some lovely cantabile tone in the slow movement and the energy and rhythmic strength of the finale. There was a tendency to sharpen in this work, \Miich seemed to be worrying the violinist, judging from his testing of the strings during the orchestral interludes. The introduction and Rondo of Saint-Seans was graceful and charming in the French manner of nearly a century ago. The modern French school was represented by Milhaud, whose Hunter’s Scene from “In the Woods of Amizons” was given a spirited performance. Contemporary composers avoid the conventional with a sophisticated deliberation and, in doing so, tend to establish new conventions, making normal the exotic. In this interesting work the composer works out a fournote figure with a purposeful out-of tuneness, combining it with itself at odd and pleasantly discordant Intervals such as-the major second. A small section of the audience would be grateful to Mr Cherniavsky for introducing them to this new work. Miss Anna Jakobovitch is more conscious of rhythm than tone, but was at. all times helpful and efficient as an accompanist. Her collaboration in the Milhaud composition was perfect. M. M.