LONDON'S BEST

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 445, 1 February 1933, Page 7

LONDON'S BEST

ORCHESTRA MUSIC THREE GREAT ORCHESTRAS OF UNQUESTJONABLE QUALITY. BRILLIANT GONDUCTORS. London is in one respect better off than ever before; there was never hefore a season .so rich as this in respect of orchestral music, writes Richard Capell in the Daily Mail. [ Three great orehestras invite the musical public to Queen's Hall. The , various merits of these are thrashed i out wherever musical people meet — and lilcewise the various merits of , the three chiefs. The Broadcasting . Orehestra's Wednesday nights are in I charge of the urbane, the serupulous, ; the persuasive Adrian Boult. Stl'ongwilled and drastie, Sir Hamilton Harty j rules the roost at the London Sym- ' phony Orehestra's Monday nights. The | magician, Sir Thomas Beecham, ; weaves spells at the Philharmonic's i Thursdays. I Dr. Boult caresses the music in hand, with careful thought, infinite " regard for detail, and fond pride in ( the heautiful tone of his mz gnificent j orchestra. Sir Hamilton grapples with ; the music, imposing upon' it his own strong declsions and impulses. If he has not yet had time to get precision or ideal beauty from his orchestra he I sees to it that, whatever a performance may lack, it shall not he characi terless. | Sir Thomas can call spirits from the vasty deep. It -seems as though . his gesture releases music; it springs naturally out as from a fount un- : sealed. The magician has lately done 1 something more; he has conjured into , heing a new orchestra (the London Philharmonic) — an orchestra that, at its first go-off, played with -such tone and marvellous ensemble that no one, not knowing Beecham, could have believed it to be a new organisation. Where They Excel. ; In what music do these three chiefs severally excel? Harty may be preferred to the romantics rather than in the classics, where he can be wilful and restless. He has above 'all made a name for himself hy superbly spirited performanees of Berlioz. Boult, ' .a musician of the widest culture and sympathies, is not a specialist, and ' there is little that comes amiss to him ■ At the International Festival, when he i conducted Alhert Rotissel's Psalm at Queen's Hall, Roussel's countrymen 1 declared they had never heard such a performance in Paris. - Beecham has conducted very little Bacjh and not much post-war music. He has never, I think, tried his hand - at late Beethoven, that is, thej Mass [ and the Choral Symphony. His Handel and Wagner have sometimes heen , eriticised as too hrilliant to be faith- . fully Teutonic. . i On the other hand, he possesses the r heart and soul of Mozart's music. [ Here no living conductor can approaeh x him. Not inferior is his Hayden. Of every work of the Russian and French j schools he is the born interpreter. He [ has been known to fail with Vaughan , Williams and to excel in Elgar. He . inspires singei's and orchestral playx ers, who always rise ahove their norma! selves under his heat, but with concevto players he is sometimes at cross-pnrposes. No one has heard j Delius' music who has not heard Beechaifi's Delius. There is to-day no j man alive in the world of music of 3 more sheer incontestahle genius.