A Debut Under Canvas

By Janos Gereben

October 21, 1976

...Tonight's "season-opener" will feature the Honolulu Symphony, with Robert LaMarchina conducting Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Paul Lyddon, soloist; and the orchestra's new assistant conductor, Sidney Rothstein, on the podium for the overture to Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," Sibelius' "Finlandia" and Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll."...

...While the Honolulu Hale acoustics are frustrating to many, the soloist for tonight's concert doesn't mind all that much.

"I prefer too much reverberation to none," said Lyddon. "There is nothing worse than a dead hall."

A "DEAD HALL" is a place where sound is absorbed by soft materials or the shape of the building. City Hall is the opposite — its hard surfaces reflect and bounce sound around for a series of mini-echoes.

Lyddon is a brand-new assistant professor of music at the University of Hawaii, just in from Wyoming where he was a full professor at the university at Laramie.

"I took a hell of a cut in rank and pay," Lyddon said, "just to come here... this is paradise and as close to civilization as possible."

Lyddon said he was in a rut in Wyoming where "I was the pianist in the West Rocky Mountains.""

The 45-year-old pianist is from Rochester N.Y., attended that city's famous Eastman School and after getting a graduate degree from the University of Illinois, he became the pianist for the United States Army Band in Washington, D.C., and often performed in the White House before President Eisenhower.

Lyddon has toured with the Denver Symphony, the Western Arts Trio and independently, performing more than 800 concerts in Europe and the United States.

His appearance tonight will be his debut in Honolulu — under a makeshift cover, in a hall with too much reverberation, opening the sixth season of the Thursday Evening series at Honlulu Hale.