MUSIC AND DRAMA

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21411, 1 March 1935, Page 5

MUSIC AND DRAMA

March 2, 4 and s—"Ten5 —"Ten Minute Alibi," by Anthony Armstrong. J. C. Williamson Company, at Theatre Royal. March 2—Vocal and piano recital at the Masonic Hall by Miss Betty Hilliard and Mr Noel Newson. March 6, 7, 8, and 9—"The Wind and the Rain," by Dr. Merton Hodge. J. C. Williamson Company, at Theatre Royal. March 21—Lecture recital on Bach by .Mrs Stansfield Prior. Under engagement to the Laurian Club. March 30, April 1 and 2—Canterbury Repertory Society will present "Dr. Knock," by Jules Remains, translated by Granville Barker. Not very flattering comments were made by a writer in the "Morning Post" recently, on a London broadcast of contemporary American music. In a work entitled the "Black

Maskers," the composer, Mr Roger Sessions, seemed to be talking a language the syntax of which was not as yet thoroughly in his possession, states the writer. The.music is presumably meant to accompany stage action, and its meaning might be clearer were it not divorced from the theatre. As it was it sounded ejaculatory and incohesive. George Gershwin's Second Rhapsody for pianoforte and orchestra (with Solomon as soloist) was, like Mr Sessions's work, noisy and emphatic. But whereas Mr Sessions spoke of things we knew nothing about and was in the main quite incomprehensible, Mr Gershwin discussed matters with which we are only too distressingly familiar and achieved thereby a miracle of trite statement with his little quips and his rather longer eloquencies of the dance hall, the whole served up with the pungent orchestration of high brow jazz. » • e 'V There is an Eton master who sometimes puzzles his pupils by telling them that one of his aunts died before the Battle of Trafalgar, stat.es a writer in a London daily. The death at Vienna of a niece of Schubert furnishes another association of the

Kind. Most of Schubert's 13 brothers and sisters died in infancy, but Theresia lived to marry and become the mother of a daughter Wilkelmine. And it was Wilhelmine, born 14 years after the composer's death, who, a.s Frau Hofbauer, has just died at the age of 92. Nearly 50 years after his death the estate of the Abbe Liszt is the subject of a lawsuit to be heard in the High Court of Hungary, states the "Morning Post." Karl Liszt, a carrier, claims to be heir to the property left by the composer, aaid his action is against the Budapest National Museum for the possessic-fi of certain portraits, jewels, medals, and a presentation crown of gold. The case will be of interest for any new light it may throw on Liszt's adventurous and, in some respects, obscure career.