MISS VERA MOORE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3862, 20 March 1928, Page 70

MISS VERA MOORE.

EXPERIENCES IN VIENNA.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 8. Miss Vera Moore (formerly of Dunedin) contemplates another tour in New Zealand during the. present year, so that music-lovers will be on the lookout for her arrival about the end of July or the beginning of August. She hopes to spend three months in the Dominion. At the present time Miss Moore is in Vienna, whither she went in November, for further study and in order to gain still wider musical experience. She is playing a great deal of sonata and chamber music there with Frau Mario Soldat Roger, who was a pupil of Joachim and a friend of Brahms, with whom she often played all his sonatas. It is interesting io recall that it was she whom Brahms asked to try over with him the violin arrangement of his E flat Clarinet Sonata before it went to print, and of her Joach’ r >'> remnrimd: “ Wh n n <l>o Sridat plays the Brahms Concerto I lay down my bow! ” Miss Moore says that Frau Roger, _ at the age of G 5, is still strong and vigorous, and i« nlnving gloriously. Frau Roger and Miss Moore have been several times to play a- the Palais Wittgenstein, which was by Marie Theresa for her Prime Mi. ster. Haydn has

conducted there, and Mozart has often played there.

“ It is wonderful,” writes Miss Moore, “ how the Spirits of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, seem in X ienna so vital and alive. It is a glorious atmosphere, and I am revelling in it all. The opera, too, is a wonderful attraction, with such singers as Schumann, Lehmann. Nildenburg, Duftan, Mayr, Piccaver, and Manowarda, and conductors who include Schalk and Strauss. They are heard here at their very best.” Apart from music, there are the splendid art galleries. Not eyen in Madrid can one see such work of Valesquez as are hung in the Kunsthistorische Museum, while the best Durer drawings are also jjt isnna, in the Albertina Museum, ihe city, too, is beautifully laid out with narks and squares, and is surrounded by the hills—the Wiener Wald—where Beethoven loved to walk. At the end of May Miss Moore will leave Austria for her tour. She will o-ive pianoforte recitals in Colombo and" in Australia cn her "way to New Zealand. From August to November she should be in the Dominion, and in inid-December she is due to give a series of four recitals in Cumberland. Engagements are already being booked for 1929.

During the past year many opportunities have come enabling this studious New Zealand pianist to gain further musical experience and knowledge. She was specially delighted at being asked to do the Mozart Quintet in E flat major with such beautiful wind players as Leon Goossens (oboe) F. Wood (bassoon), Haydn Draper (clarinet) and Aubrey Brain (horn), at a chamber music concert at Haslemere. So successful was one of Miss Moore’s recitals in London in October that it had to be repeated a week later, each time to a capacity audience.

Of her recital at Newbury that followed, the musical critic of the local News wrote:

“It is not often that a pianoforte recital appeals almost entirely to the aesthetic sense. Too often the listener’s chief emotion is amazement at the wonderful dexterity of the pianist’s fingers or at the colossal volume of tone that can be produced from a modern grand pianoforte. Sometimes, too, one’s enjoym*nt of the music is lessened by the freakish mannerisms of the player. . “ There were none of these distractions in the playing of Miss Vera Moore. Dexterity of technique and ample volume of tone were in evidence, but were never thrust upon the listeners. It was the interpretation of the music that was the whole concern of the artist at the piano,

and the result was an hour and a quarter of sheer delight. Tho recital opened with three Bach n umbers—all so beautifully played that one could have wished that the whole programme was to be devoted to the works of that incomparable master. However, Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat (Op. 27, No. 1) which followed, showed that Miss Moore was equally successful in the interpretaton of that composer. The next number was Brahms variations on an original theme —a work demanding considerable technical skill, but still more mental grasp and poetic insight.