Around The Nationals

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 132, 2 January 1942, Page 20

Around The Nationals

| Deca foremost living comRalph Vaughan Williams, is represented by several compositions in the programmes for. next week, His "London Symphony " (1YA, Friday, January 9, 8.15 p.m.) was written in 1914, and is a vivid but contemplative work, to which he might well have applied Beethoven’s comment on his own sixth symphony-‘" More the expression of feeling than tone painting." Some critics claimed to have discovered : allusions to places in London, in the symphony’s use of London tunes, but the composer refuted them. His "Wasps" overture, written for a Cambridge undergraduates’ performance of Aristophanes’ drama, is a jolly work. This, and also "The Lark Ascending," for solo violin and orchestra, are included in 1YX’s programme of modern English music for Tuesday, January 6. There are songs by "V.W." both in this programme and in the evening programmes for 2YA, Friday; 3YA, Tuesday; and 1YA, Friday. * * * DEVOTEES of the violoncello will find three concertos for that instrument in the programmes for next Friday. One of Haydn’s will be played over 3YA at 7.30 p.m. on Friday, January 9, the soloists being Emanuel Feuermann; also on Friday night (at 7.45) 4YZ will broadcast Dvorak’s ‘cello Concerto, with Pau Casals as soloist. Beatrice Harrison will be the soloist in an Elgar concert6 to be heard from 1YA on the same night at 9.34. Those who prefer the clarinet will find four works written specially for clarinet, two of them by Mozart-his Clarinet Quintet (2YA, Monday, January 5) and his Clarinet Concerto (2YA, Tuesday, January 6) were both written for Anton Stadler, a clarinet virtuoso of the day, within the last two years of the composer's life. The other two items are Weber’s Concertino (2YN, Sunday, January 4) and Bela Bartok’s " Contrasts" for clarinet, violin and piano, which will be played by Benny Goodman, Joseph Szigeti, and the composer, over 4YA on Monday, January 5, at 7.59 p.m. Bartok’s modern and unusual "Contrasts" were recorded in the U.S. a few months ago.

|] ©. BACH, the composer of a Sin- * fonia in B Flat which is to be heard from 3YA on Wednesday, January 7, at 7.59 p.m., was a very different personality from his father. While Jchann Sebastian spent the greater part of his life in Leipzig working to fulfil the local needs for music, Johann Christian, his eighteenth child, became well known in London, Paris, and Rome. In London he wrote operas, became rich, and taught music to Queen Charlotte. Her Majesty paid his bills-over £4,000-after he died, and gave his widow enough to get home. When Mozart visited London in 1764, his father took him to see J. C. Bach; the boy sat on Bach’s knee and they played alternate bars of pieces for the clavier.