MUSICAL MIMICRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 380, 14 June 1928, Page 14

MUSICAL MIMICRY

HONEGGER’S RAILWAY TRAIN

CLEVER BUT USELESS Modern tendencies In music have been the subject of some interesting remarks by Benno Moisiewitch, who is now giving a series of recitals in Melbourne, and who will give recitals in Auckland on June 19, 21, and 23. Alluding to the venture of Arthur Honegger into the region of the fantastic in programme music when he composed “Pacific 231,” an orchestral mimicry of the rush of a railway train, Moisiewitch said: “It is clever —brilliant, in fact, but I think there is a great deal of force in the remark that if one wishes to hear a train he goes to the railway. As for the rejoinder made against a picture of the sea, for example, in a musical composition, I claim that these eases are not analogous. The sea, in its tumult, and indeed in its varying moods, arouses emotions, and inspires one to better things, but a railway train is simply a physical force, and there its effect ends.” Speaking of the British group of composers, Moisiewitch said that men like Arnold Bax, Eugene Goossens, Ireland, Frank Bridge, and several others, who began to write during the war, have proved a vital force in the history of music in their country. Since the war many of their pieces had been played a great deal in America, but very little that was new or startling had occurred among them since that time. Eugene Goossens had now taken a position in charge of the Eastman musical activities at Rochester, New York, "and,” added Mr. Moisiewitch, “he is likely to remain a fixture there, unfortunately. I say ’unfortunately because, engaged on these duties, he cannot devote time to composition. The last time I saw him he agreed to write a piano concerto for me, and it is now overdue.”