27
MUSICAL COURIER
February 2, 1922
WHAT BOSTON
NEW YORK and CHICAGO SAY OF
Щг ®o£tcm 3poöt
Performance Perfect in Every Tone and Nuance
NEW YORK TRIBUNE
The Chicago Evening Post
TUESDAY, MARCH
Raymond Havens in Piano Recital at Cohan's Grand.
Luckily for me, Mr. Havens so pleased his audience yesterday that he was¡ obliged to add encores to the end of! the program, otherwise despite my careful calculations I should have missed out. He played with a clear tone and a clean technique of the sort which brings every phrase out with such distinctness as made a slip most apparent, and there was one or two. Some men have a free and easy way about them, in which a wrong note becomes a matter of no importance whatsoever. Mr. Havens is not of these. Ho -is a clear thinker who understands the music-and works over it for the love of it, polishing the phrases until every detail is adjusted to the whole and all knit together. It was excellent playing, sympathetic, understanding and refreshingly sane. The audience made him add a number of encores at the conclusion of the regular program, so that I had a most satisfactory concert after all.
ifeon Sc ijamltn Piano
Havens, in Piano Recital, Is a Poetic Interpreter
Technic Abundant, Yet Unobtrusive, and Used Only for Expression
There •was much to be thankful for in the piano recital given by Raymond Havens yesterday afternoon at Aeolian Hall. In the first place, this talented young man’s aim did not appear to be to, paralyze the audience with a dazzling display of technic, and his program was not of the cut-and-dried variety. Rameau’s “La Triumphante” and a sonata by Scarlatti immediately put the hearers in an amiable and receptive mood for what was to follow. This included two auaint and charming little pieces by John Alden Carpenter, “Little Indian” and “Little Dancer”; five Chopin numbers, Alkan’s “Le Vent” and Schubert’s Fantasie in C major, which, with Liszt’s “Campa-nella,” were the only two compositions that might have claimed the rank of battle-scarred war horses.
Mr. Havens is exceptionally gifted, deeply musical. His technic is abundant, yet, as it should be, unobtrusive and used only for purposes of expression. His tone has both roundness and depth. He is a poetic interpreter. It would be difficult to sav in which music he gave the most pleasure, and to give pleasure does not lie within the province of every pianist.
BY OLIN DOWNES
The artistic results of the recital given yesterday afternoon in Jordan flail by Raymond Havens, the young pianist of this city, should have been gratifying to the performer as well as to the audience which applauded him with justified enthusiasm. Mr. Havens, precociously gifted as a young boy, has never stopped developing as an artist,
ALWAYS ENJOYABLE
His playing yesterday Was the kind of playing which makes a hardened concert goer- ,took forward to hearing him «grain, knowing that he will do some-thiusj. which,, is־ individual and worth v.׳h;re. ׳Time 'was when ft seemed to this writer that despite Mr. Haven’s accustomed beauty of tone and fluency of mechanism he lacked an authoritative personal quality in his art
If this was so in former years the pianist has grown past it. His playing of the two pieces of Rameau, “La Tri-omphante” and the gavotte from "Le Temple de la Gloire,’* -was an unalloyed artistic pleasure front the first note to the last. Not half a dozen pianists known to this publio—we don't except the most famous—could have accomplished this triumph of beauty, of the finest taste, the most exquisite proportions. The performance was so felicitous and so perfect. In every tone and nuance that it is not easy to believe it c;uld be done as well again.
Poetical Coloring Present
Qualities of fancy; of poetical coloring. of capriciously yet orderly and logical treatment of rhythm were admirably present in the playing of the familiar Mendelssohn Rondo Capriccioso. A little known Nocturne of Field would have, fallen short in the hands of a musician, less aware of the precise limitations and charm of this old-fashioned music.
There ■was an Imaginative performance of Schumann’s Toccata, which despite modern technical developments which reach a point of which Schumann did not dream, remains a very difficult ■technical feat. We personally prefer a grander conception of the music, but a majority would probably support Mr. Haven’s Idea of it, which is surely Schumannish in its intimacy and its treatment of detail
Pieces by John Alden Carpenter, "Little Indian” and “Little Dancer," were amusing and skilfully written Bui Grieg's "Andante Religioso” seems s.v-’iy lacking in the seriousness of the North, or at least presents !Northern harmonies permeated with a Massen-etish sentimentality and emotionalism, a curious piece for Grieg to write. The programme came to an end with a group of Chopin pieces. Mr. Haven plaved encores demanded by a large audience His modesty, his thoughtfulness and artistic restraint in performance were thrice admirable. He has indeed reason to congratulate himself on his achievement
Pierce Bldg., Boston, Mass.
H. B. WILLIAMS
Concert Management,
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