Tippett Oratorio Premiere

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31109, 12 July 1966, Page 12

Tippett Oratorio Premiere

Sir Michael Tippett is probably best known as a composer by his provocative early oratorio “A Child of Our Time” which will be given what is believed to be its New Zealand premiere by the Christchurch Harmonic Society in the Civic Theatre tomorrow evening. Of his generation of English composers Sir Michael Tippett, who is 61, is considered second only to Benjamin Britten in stature, and

some of his countrymen regard him as more interesting than Britten. First performed in 1944, “A Child of Our Time” has received more performances than Tippett’s other and later large scores. Using somewhat the format of a Bach Passion, but substituting Negro spirituals for chorales, Tippett has composed “ A Child of Our Time” around the theme of “Man at Odds with his Shadow.” The specific story from which the composer has conceived his more generalised text is based on Herschel Grynsqpan, the Jewish refugee boy who assassinated the German diplomat Ernst von Rath in Paris in 1938. The action, resulting from persecution, touched off much greater persecution of the Jews in Germany. Tippett has set his text in a sombre, reasonably direct style, harmonically conservative and frequently appealing. The spirituals are skillfully embedded in the score and do not sound out of place in their context. The soloists in the Harmonic Society’s performance tomorrow evening will be Elizabeth Hellawell (s), Mary

Adams (ms), Anson Austin (t) and Winston Sharp (b). Miss Adams, an Australian with a background of concert, opera, radio and television work in New South Wales, will make her first appearance in Christchurch while Austin, who is leaving the next day for England to audition for the 8.8. C. Singers, will make his last appearance. It will be quite an occasion for in addition to singing in the Tippett premiere, Anson Austin will sing Vaughan Williams’s song-cycle “On Wenlock Edge” with Maurice Till (piano) and the Prague Quartet of the University of Canterbury. It will also be the quartet’s first appearance with the society. A setting of words by A. E. Housman, “On Wenlock Edge” was written by Vaughan Williams “with several atmospheric effects” after he had practised orchestration with Ravel. It was first performed in 1909. The concert will open with another Vaughan Williams work, the brief “Serenade to Music,” which the choir sang at the opening concert of the

Conmmonwealth Arts Festival in Britain last year. William R. Hawky will conduct the choir and Christchurch Civic Symphony Orchestra. Because of large orchestral forces and limitations of the Civic Theatre the choir will be reduced to 170 singers.