A Lasting Record (Stephen Downes, HarperCollins)

Alongside Rubinstein and Horowitz, William Kapell was widely considered one of the three greatest pianists of his time. Kapell died in 1953 at the age of 31 in a plane crash on the way home to America from a tour of Australia. Dogged by bad reviews, Kapell called Australia ‘the most unmusical place on earth, probably more than Iraq’. Yet it was in Geelong, in the last concert he ever played, where he attained artistic perfection in a performance of Chopin’s Funeral March, whose first phrase is synonymous with death. Kapell was desperate to obtain a copy of the Geelong Chopin but the ABC had destroyed the tapes. He was dead three days later. Luckily for posterity, Roy Preston, a humble Melbourne music-lover, recorded Kapell’s final performance from the radio broadcast. Author Stephen Downes propels the reader through the story of Kapell’s ill-fated final tour and his last recording. Excess details at times hover between tedium and scruple, and local readers may be distracted by descriptions of Australian locales and concepts intended for overseas readers (Toorak: ‘a posh suburb’; sport: ‘an Australian craze’). Nevertheless, the delightful story of A Lasting Record should be imbibed by classical music fans everywhere. Kapell is still relatively unknown. This book might begin to redress that.

Lucas Smith is a writer and co-editor of Melbourne journal The Nose

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Category: Reviews