Bach & Samuel

Bach has been a bugaboo to many pianists, many audiences. Pianists must play him for their prestige whether or not they are able. Audiences squirm, remember unhappily their own five-finger exercises, their struggles with the metronome.

An All-Bach program was the announcement for Harold Samuel's Manhattan recital/- last week. It was a rainy night but the hall was filled. Some had heard him in 1924 when he came from England to play at Elizabeth Shurtliff Coolidge's Berkshire Festival; some had attended his six Bach recitals last year, given on six consecutive days, had heard people so far forget themselves as to cheer him--and Bach. Some went to hear him for the first time--a man who, according to Critic Lawrence Gilman, has made All-Bach recitals as popular in the British Isles as cricket matches, a musician with a keen enough sense of humor to tell on himself of the moist night in South Africa when he slipped off his stool and under the piano. They saw him come out on the stage, a little man, one-third fore head and nearly two-thirds shirt front; saw him bow, start to play. A group of Preludes and Fugues, the Partia in C minor, the Toccata in G minor and the French Suite in E -- he interpreted flawlessly and made them vital, thrilling. ^

/-His last in Manhattan for two seasons. He will play in other U. S. cities; in Chicago, Minneapolis and as far south as Louisville. In midwinter he sails for Europe on engagements.