PADEREWSKI’S FAREWELL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 88, 5 July 1927, Page 17

PADEREWSKI’S FAREWELL

AN ENTHUSIASTIC AUDIENCE A CHOPIN PROGRAMME A huge audience bade farewell to Paderewski last night, the Town Hall being completely filled. This programme was devoted altogether to Chopin—perhaps the first of its kind that has been played in Auckland, though one-composer programmes are not unusual in the great world. We may combine a sincere love of Chopin with a reluctance to hear quite so much of him at one sitting; two hours and more of these emotions, heroic or neurotic, feverish or languid, shows up rather cruelly his want of real substance. lit is “fundamental brainstuff” that distinguishes the very great composer from the composer who begins to stand a little doubtfully on his pedestal. We must not seem ungracious, however. Compared with much of the stuff that is heard, this recital might have been the authentic music of the spheres. Chopin was, of course, a consummate genius, and also very much of a gentleman; and Paderewski is uniquely equipped to express these two aspects of Chopin’s nature. The master was not always in his very finest form last night; slight signs of fatigue weer sometimes noticed in the more taxing works. But smaller pieces and quieter passages were done so beautifully that their defects, if they had any, have been forgotten. The cantabile of the F major Nocturne, Op. 5; th€; “Black Key” and “Butterfly,” and the flowing brilliance of the C major Etude, Op. 10; the Berceuse, and the subtly haunting Mazurka in F sharp minor, Op. 591 —all these, and other things, were given the utmost beauty of performance. The F minor Fantasia and Ballade were only a little less in execution, but the interpretations were intensely interesting and remarkable.

At the close of the concert, after several extra numbers had been given, there was a quite touching demonstration of enthusiasm, and Paderewski returned once more to play his own little “Chant du Voyageur” and his Minuet in G—and so farewell. —K.J.B.