THE BEST IN MUSIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 November 1940, Page 8

THE BEST IN MUSIC

A CONDUCTOR'S .VIEWS. Dr. Malcolm Sargent, who recently conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in twice-nightly concerts at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, has since given an address on some of his experiences. He had three interesting stories to tell to illustrate what he called the need of ordinary people for music in wartime. Just after the war broke out he was conducting a performance of Elgar's “Enigma Variations” in Australia. Perhaps the spirit of the time explained it. but to him the playing had never seemed so beautiful and sensitive. The audience was spellbound, and afterwards a woman of no great pretensions to musical culture said, “I thought how silly it made Hitler look.”

At Glasgow, where the Philharmonic Orchestra played to 30,000 people during one week in a musichall, he found that people went to the concerts because they always went to the mu-sic-hall, but when they got there they found that the music was something which appealed directly to them and which they could understand. A friend of his asked a man in the gallery, "Are you fond of music?” The man replied. "Well, f didn't know I was. but I have been to every show so far and I am going right through.” In a Manchester publichouse a friend of his heard a working man asked what he thought of the performance. The reply was, “It's made me find out I'm a high-brow.”