SOME RECENT MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 170, 25 September 1942, Page 10

SOME RECENT MUSIC

: No. 29:

By

MARSYAS

66 HEY all went to London" | is the title of a series of : special narrative features devoted to composers who did so, The one I heard was about Haydn, and I listened with considesable pleasure. But I wish the compilers had avoided: (1) The use of the nickname " Papa" which Mozart bestowed, having earned for himself the right to such familiarity. (2) The nonchalant mentioning of "famous" names (Salomon, Esterhazy and co.) without explanatory parentheses, on the assumption ‘that every listener is familiar with them. (3) Sentences beginning: " Small wonder ‘then, that this... ." (4) Conversation between George III. and Haydn, giving the latter a graceful (and servile) English speech, whereas in fact I believe it was very clumsy. (5) An awestruck hush at the word "romance" and a girlish relishment of the details of Haydn’s "affairs" in England; the latter being imposed by the text and prettily enhanced by an expert fernale reader. ‘ bad Eo % FROM one reference noted in the printed programmes and _ several items actually heard, I infer that the NBS acquired a set of recordings by the Victor: Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Charles O’Connell) called "The Heart of the Symphony." It appears to be a selection of favourite movements selected from symphonic works, and recorded on their own. One station apparently played the whole lot as a programme. Dvorak’s Largo, a Tchaikovski Scherzo, a piece of Scheherezade, etc., are all there. This then means that some listeners ate going to get the idea that they have just heard "the heart" of such-and-such a masterpiece. Let them be warned never to believe such a thing. To isolate and exhibit the "heart" of ey master’s symphony would be a feat

comparable to removing and displaying the brain of Rodin’s " Thinker." "The Heart of the Symphony" (if we may admit that there is a certain something for which the phrase can serve as a metaphor) would be, rather, an elongated intangible image, present in every movement of a symphony. And I rather think the thick end of it would be somewhere near the middle of the first movement; certainly so in the case of the Viennese symphonies. But even there, I doubt if you could catch hold . of any one section of it. * Eg % To judge by reports that have reached me, my remarks about women ’cellists gave pain to several graceful and elegant exponents of that instrument. (I was indiscreet enough to say "a woman never looks so ungainly as when straddling the violoncello"). I will remind those sensitive persons that many musicians who have been more fortunate in their choice of sex are even worse off in the matter of appearances. Imagine for instance a young woman playing the

French Horn and having to empty teaspoonfuls of water from it every 40 bars or so; she would find it no easier than the male horn player does to convince everyone that it is water and not saliva. She’d cut a dash in the finale of Haydn’s Oxford Symphony, too, where she would be required "to make octave leaps on staccato quavers, Presto. There, I am told, the rapid pursing and unpursing of the player’s lips is a sight not to be missed. Or imagine her as a trombonist, having to give it up finally and confess to her friends that her new teeth had refused to co-operate in. the formation of the embouchure. However, if any ’cellist will show me that she has had studio photographs taken of herself with the whole instrument in view and in playing position, I will confess myself the weaker person. Especially if they have been exhibited in the photographer’s street showcase. * * % HE Sibelius symphony series on 3YA draws to a close, and with the help of an additional contribution from 4YA in the shape of the seventh symphony, given on a Sunday afternoon, I have found a clue to the way I feel about these works. It’s like this:the schoolboy, in the early stage of the process of finding where he comes into the scheme of things, writes his name inside a schoolbook, then the number of his class, the name of the school, the street, the suburb, the town, the province, the island, the country, and so on, ending "The World: The Universe". And he ‘looks it over and wonders if there isn’t just one thing more he can squéeze in somewhere, or wonders what might be beyond the Universe. It may not be until he grows up that he finds other dimensions within which he must define and locate himself. And if he happens to be a musical boy, then he hasn’t completed the job until he discovers he is free. to enter a vast new world that will be revealed to him in Sibelius’s symphonies and tone poems.