"Great Soloist"

Recitals of chamber music are usually serious functions, attended by serious souls, with cultured dignity at heart. Generally there is only discreet applause; high enthusiasm is taboo, also encores.

But such rules and precedents are not made for masters; they are made by them, and may be broken by them at will. Last week Ignace Jan Paderewski appeared at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, jointly with Efrem Zimbalist (violinist), Felix Salmond ('cellist) and Harold Bauer, "who turned the pages," in a performance of Beethoven's Trio in B-flat.

The audience rose, cheered, stamped, shouted, whistled, howled. They patiently endured intermediate numbers by Salmond and Zimbalist, only to burst forth again at the reappearance of the idol of two generations. Then the stage lights were lowered, just as Paddy first had them lowered in the same place early in the 90's. Then--the Schubert-Liszt Hark, Hark, the Lark, the melting melody of the 'Schubert B-flat Impromptu, and the inevitable Chopin group: Etudes, hurled like glittering lances, and a Scherzo that stung, bit and cooed seductively. Then encores--until the approach of the zero hour when gendarmes forcibly dispersed the immovably enraptured diehards.

Next morning, the coldly critical verdict of the press:

"As an ensemble player of chamber music in combination with other artists, Paderewski remains a great soloist."

"It was a gracious act of self-effacement for Efrem Zimbalist and Felix Salmond to assist Mr. Paderewski in

rendering the trio. Evidently the

mighty Pole attached no higher importance than did Beethoven to the parts for violin and cello, for his Olympian thunders almost completely drowned out the none too insistent playing of Messrs. Salmond and Zimbalist"