Toy Symphony

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 92, 28 March 1941, Page 5

Toy Symphony

AYDN once said "A mischievous fit comes over one sometimes that is perfectly beyond control." It was in such a mood that he went to a country — fair and bought all the toy instruments that he could lay hands on. Back in the summer house where he worked at Esterhaz, these toy instruments so fascinated him that he jotted down a theme, scored it for rattle, drum and the rest-and finished up by writing the "Toy Symphony." It was first performed by his own orchestra before the Prince’s household as a joke. It is scored

for two violins, double bass and piano, with toy trumpet, drum, rattle, triangle, quail, cuckoo and nightingale, or bird warbler. When Haydn first played it before his réyal master, the audience laughed-so did the players. No wonder that the most experienced musicians in Haydn’s band could not keep time for laughing. Yet the sym-

phony is written with enough musical skill to save it becoming a silly farce. Last year a number of famous musicians gave a performance of Haydn’s Toy Symphony at the National Gallery in London. They started in deadly earnest, then those who were playing the wind instruments got out of breath; they began to laugh. So did the audience. It all happened just the same as it did 152 years before at Esterhaz. The toy trumpets were played by Eileen Joyce, Kathleen Long and Cyril Smith, three

of our best pianists. The cuckoos were played by two more great pianists-this time Myra Hess and Irene Scharrer. Yet another great pianist-Benno Moiseiwitsch, played the triangle, and he gave it such a whang that he dropped his stick. The pianists were very much to the fore in this performance, perhaps it was because Myra Hess organised it -("From Ebor’s Scrapbook,’ 2YA, March 10.)