. ‘knew ‘ ment. bead Canadian pianist wins acclaim in Moscow for brilliant concert G eae Gould young and gift ed Canadian pianist, gave his es Soviet concert in the big hall of the Moscow Con- servatory. It was a concert. Moscow audiences. had bean awaiting with -great interest, No one anything about the 24- year-old pianist and there were some who doubted whether he would be able.to-interpret the music of? Bach and- Beethoven, whom they were accustomed to hear inthe renditions - of such brilliant performers. as Gilels, Richter, and Golden- Weiser, and even,.in the case of the older generation, Rach- maninov. But.all,-scholars and lovers of music alike, gathered that evening in Moscow’s larg- est concert hall, were eager to hear the Canadian pianist. The concert began. A very slim young man with delicately.- chiselled features came onto the stage with an embarrassed smile. The youth- ful pianist was noticeably hervous — it was his’first per- formance before such a large audience of strangers. But no sooner had the first chord of the Art of the Fugue resound- ed in the hushed hall, than a complete change took place in the youth at the piano. His face was lit with inspiration. His lips whispered words known only to himself. His flexible, strong fingers evoked lovely sounds from the instru- He gave a splendid ren- dition of Bach — sonorous, beautiful, grand. When the notes of the last COMING JUNE 4th SPECTACIis! , ACTION ! EMOTION ! William Shakespeare’s “OTHELLO” in Glorious Color MUSIC BY ARAM KHACHATURIAN Odeon Theatre Victoria, B.C. Continuous from 1 p.m. 5th fugue died away and the pian- ist’s hands dropped to his sides like lashés, the hall was’ too spellbound to stir... But. then the silence was. rent: asunder by a thunder of applause. Mos- cow was completely won over by his performance. That evening Glen» Gould played.the Toecata, Allemande, Courante, -Aria, Saraband, Gavot, Jig, included in Bach’s No. 6 score.in E minor, Beet- hoven’S Sonata Op. 30 in.E major, and Alban Berg’s Sen- ata. The program offered no more,, but the ‘enraptured audience called again and again for encores. $e: ie; soa After the concert Gould met and talked with a number of Soviet musicians and critics— Heinrich Neuhaus, oldest pro- fessor of . Moscow Conserva- tory, pianists Dmitri Bash- kirov, Tatyana Nikolayeva, and Victor .Merzhanov,. Mitrofan Belotserkovsky, director of the Moscow State Philarmonic Society, Ivan music critic. Martynov, the Giving his impressions of the Soviet Union, Gould said he had. never before been wel- comed by such warm-hearted and cordial hosts. As to the audience that evening, he said he had no words to express his delight. P “I am amazed to see. how deeply the Moscovites under- stand music,” he said. “They have a fine appreciation of the works of the great composers I shall never forget the un- expected and wonderful rc«- ception they gave me. I am simply happy to have perform- ed on this farnous stag: before such a large and attentive udience. I am als) happy to have met the peopie which have given the world such wonderful co apessc as Sergei 1 rokofiev .ani such virtuosos © or the piati: as Gilels and. “vyateslay Rishtes whem I am very fod of and‘ whase mestery I highiy. ¢prreciate.” Friendly Persuasion wins Cannes honors HE CANNES Film Festival’s prize for the best full-length feature ‘has been awarded to the American International production Friendly Persua- sion, directed by William Wyler. Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire star as a Quaker couple striving to prevent their son—Anthony Perkins—from defending the family farm from Southerners in the Am- erican Civil War. : No mention was made of the writer in ‘the credit titles shown at Cannes.; Hollywood scriptwriter Michael Wilson went to the festival to claim that he wrote it. Wyler said Wilson’s. script, written ten years ago, had had to be re-written by two other people, but Wilson declared his namzhad been.erased from the credits because he had been summoned before the ‘notori- ous Un-American Activities Committee. Two special prizes went to: ta Polish- Se Kanal — aS SSS ULANOVA © LEPESHINSKAYA ° EMIONOVA* MAKSAKOVAcKOZLOYSKY IROGOVe REISEN*® MIKHAILOV in sBrince [gor*~— "Ivar Susanin® . “Swwa 7 AN-UNPRE DENTE FILM SPECTACLE n IN w MAGICOLOR te eatucing The Greatest Sonet Stars of Ballet .Music and Opera (2 a= . VARSITY JUNE 3-4-5 THEATRE 4375 West 10th Ave. grim story of a group of in- surgents in the sewers of War- saw during the rising against the Nazis in 1944—and a Swed- ish film, Phe Seventh Seal, Prize for the best original screen, play was awarded to the Soviet entry The Forty- Hirst, a love story about a So- viet girl and a White Russian officer she has taken prisoner. G. Koltounov is the winning writer, his producer, Grigori Tchoukhrai. The award for the best di- reeted film went to French director-producer Robert Bres- son for his Escape from the Death Cell — about a French Resistance leader getting away from his Gestapo captors. John. Kitzmiller, the Ameri- can Negro actor, got the best male performance. award: for his part in a Yugoslav film, The Valley of Peace — an- other. war. picture. Best female .performance prize was Won by Italian Giul etta Masina’— as a repentant prostitute in Cabirias Nights, directed by her husband Fred- erico Fellini. Denmark and Japan shared the prize for best narrative doc- umentary. The Danes’ entry was Devil of the Glacier — about the Eskimos of Green- land. Japan’s — The Roof of Japan — is about the Japanese mountains. Rumania won the short films prize with a cartoon, Short Story. Britain won no_ festival awards this year. Its main entry was Yangtse Incident. those A German-Swiss archeological team found this sculp- tured head in an ancient temple near Abusir. The only royal head ever found wearing the crown of lower Egypt, it is believed te be that of King Userkat or his brother, Sahure (2560 B.C.) Soviet film to have premiere at Victoria THE North American .prem- iere of the Soviet film Othel- lo will take place at Odeon Theatre. in Victoria June 4 and 5. Othello is played by Sergei Bondarchuk and Desdemona by the young actress Irina Skobtseva. This version has an English sound track. Last year at Cannes it won the award for the best color film another prize for the and best fiction . production. Artist of the USSR graduat- ed from the Institute of Cin- People’s Sergei Bondarchuk ematography in 1948 and soon rose to be one of the leading Soviet film actors. Among his most ~ successful roles are of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko in a film of the same name, of Dymov in Chekhov's Grasshopper and of Othello in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Trina Ykobtseva is a gradu- ate of the Moscow Art Theatre Studio. This is her film debut. x 503 a If you want to be cynical about it, you can say that For Whom the Bell Tolls, made 14_ ago, has been released again because of the re-emer- gence of its star Ingrid Berg- man. Certainly it is not be- cause the producers or dis- tributors suddenly decided to commemorate the 20th anni- years versary *an explicit of U.S. participation in the Spanish war. For, as its male star Gary Cooper once told a reviewer, “it takes no sides.” And not only, does it take no sides but anyone seeing the picture for the first time, and not having read the book, know Ernest Hemingwa® would be hard put to what the war was all about. The £ — author would deny it (and has denied novel itself, while its it vehemently) is ob- jectively an anti-Spanish Re-, publican story, even though Hemingway was vehemently pro-Republican and played an honorable role during the en- tire war. And the. film follows the novel so respectfully that it becomes an anti-Spanish Re- publican film, as well as an anti-Communist film. For it reveals that Soviet Commun- ists “ran” the war (which they didn’t); and while it hints-ver- bally at fascist atrocities, one of its most brilliantly conceiv- ed and executed sequences is demonstration of Loyalist atrocity — ‘and this was true of the novel as well. Objectively the film is a slander. of the Spanish war, which -presented so pure an issue of democracy against fascist reaction that it com- manded the allegiance of mil- lionsof the world’s people. MAY 31, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 13 i i] ]