"I Shall Never Return"

Manhattan-born William Kapell was a hammer-handed but unmistakably talented pianist of 19 when he first crashed on to the U.S. music scene in a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1941. In rapid order, he won three important awards, gathered a devoted following and dazzled the critics with his performances. "Playing of Rachmaninoff dimensions," cheered the Times's Olin Downes. ''Complete mastery, with prodigious strength and swiftness." Kapell appeared with 20 major orchestras, and his bouncing plume of black hair became familiar to concert audiences across the U.S.

As time passed, the critics developed a more exacting tone. Kapell's real forte, they ruled, was the moderns, e.g.. his favorite Prokofiev and Khachaturian, and such technically demanding romantics as Rachmaninoff. With other music, they sometimes complained, he lacked "tonal sensuousness." But without hesitation, they placed him among the top young pianists of his time. Pianist Kapell looked for new fields to conquer, took himself as far afield as Europe. South America, Israel, Australia.

Fortnight ago, ending his second tour of Australia, he sounded a bitter note. Riffling through his press notices he read that though his Schubert had "surprising warmth." his Mozart was merely "well-bred," his Bach "dry."

"Dry Bach!" he exclaimed to a reporter for Sydney's Sunday Telegraph. "Listen to this." And the room, wrote the reporter, "was filled with liquid sound, mellow, golden," as Kapell turned to his keyboard. But Kapell had his fill of Sydney critics; it was goodbye forever. "I shall never return," he said.

Last week Pianist Kapell. 31. took off in a British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines DC-6 for the long flight home. Eight thousand miles later, letting down for an instrument landing at San Francisco, the big ship clipped a fog-concealed tree, crashed headlong into the side of a mountain ravine. Among the 19 who died in the flames was William Kapell.

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