Czech Pianist Appreciated In Fine Concert At University

Rudolph Firkusny, the Czech pianist, gave a recital before a large audience in Bishops Convocation Hall last evening.  The programme was varied and sound in its choice, and the performance marked by exceptionally careful and sensitive musicianship.

The programme opened with two Bach-Busoni chorale preludes.  In the first, “Now Comes the Gentiles’ Saviour,” Mr. Firkusny, by his control of cantabile tone, explored fully the spiritual and contemplative qualities of the main theme and its quiet cowiter [?] – pointer.  “Rejoice, Beloved Christians” developed and augmented theme under a connecting thread of fluent and joyous passage work.

Beethoven’s “Wadstein” [?] sonata (Op. 53), a work too rarely performed was played with quiet perfection.  Making no capital of the technical difficulties of the work, Mr. Firkusny allowed the delicate and meditative qualities of the music to speak for themselves. That the movements were not interspersed with applause, made it possible to appreciate how intimately the movements grew out of each other.

The Chopin group showed beyond question the sincerity of Mr. Firkusny’s performance. The pieces had been chosen for their musical qualities rather than for their virtuosity; and the pianist’s unobtrusive but flawless technique gave a quality of lightness and restraint to these works that it too rarely heard in the performance of Chopin.  The morbid element was suitably suppressed, so that the romantic beauty of the theness [?] and the sudden flashes of harmonic and textual invention could by fully enjoyed.  The Barcarolle’s [?] (Op 60) was played with a quiet lyricism lacking bombast.  The performance of the B flat minor Waltz, so much played by amateurs, was a sharp lesson in restrain and lightness of touch.  Two Etudes were played, and the group closed with the large and rhapsodic, but decidedly unjocular Scherzo [?] in B flat minor, Op. 31.

The two Debussy Preludes, La puerta del vino and La Terrasse des audiences au [?] clair de lune, were both quiet atmospheric pieces.  Mr. Firkusny’s sense of relative tonal values within the limited mezzoforte range gave this music a haunting and distant beauty.  Stravinsky’s flinyt and exciting Russian Dance from “Petrushka [?]” showed the increased harmonic and technical scope of 20th century piano music.  The three Smetana compositions, also in the modern idiom, contrasted firm and ambiguous rhythmic effects Medved (bear) and the Polka both derive from traditional Czech material.  The Etude de Concert, an early more Laestian work, was less characteristic.  All three works were performed with assurance and sympathy by a musician imbued with the spirit of his national music.

Mr. Firkusny’s playing was marked by restraint, technical perfection and sincere musicianship.  His one concern was to reflect faithfully the composer’s music rather than to give a personal “interpretation” as a display of virtuosity.  At all times completely master of his instrument, he was able to devote himself entirely to the sensitive and faithful expression of his programme.  It is rarely that one has the opportunity to hear as polished a performance or as sincere musicianship.

Mr. Firkusny generously played two Chopin pieces and a Smetana Polka as encores.  The audience by their attentive listening and enthusiastic applause made a real contribution to the performance.