Butterfly Man's Return

Looking much like an extremely competent and self-effacing butler, a tall, baldish German walked upon the stage of Manhattan's Town Hall one day last week to give the first important recital of the U. S. concert season. Pianist Walter Gieseking, absent from the U. S. for two years, had already established himself as a prime interpreter of the subtle iridescences of Claude Debussy. Long before he reached Debussy (which he admits he plays "the right way . . . without any noticeable motion of the fingers"), Gieseking made his audience aware that in two years and more than 200 European concerts his playing of Bach, Mozart, Schumann had gained in nobility and strength. And he braved the showiness of Liszt so capably that his audience might never have guessed, had he not mentioned it to an interviewer beforehand, that he had contemplated revising his program to spare his right thumb which, outstretched, had lately collided with his garden wall in Wiesbaden.

Walter Gieseking, beginning a transcontinental jaunt this week, will bolster a touring pianistic lineup which is topped by Rachmaninoff and includes able Rudolf Serkin, Alexander Brailowsky. Hulking, oddly demure of face. Pianist Gieseking will reach California in December. There he likes to relax by hunting butterflies. Son of a German physician and entomologist, Gieseking has one of the largest privately owned collections of butterflies in Europe. He has detected resemblances between California butterflies and European species, believes their forebears migrated by way of Asia and Alaska thousands of years ago. Once Gieseking found six caterpillars in Berkeley, took them on tour and back to Germany where, to his great pleasure, they turned out to be not only butterflies but "beautiful."

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