RECENT MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 177, 13 November 1942, Page 2

RECENT MUSIC

By

Marsyas

No. 36

INCE we don’t have all our favourS ite string quartets and quintets played by full string orchestras, there would seem to be no reason why Tudor madrigals, written for small household groups of singers, should be served up en mash by hefty choirs, And yet this is what the Fleet Street Choir, recently noticed in this column, is doing. A new recording presents once again the old favourite Fair Phyllis, and a ballet by Thomas Tomkins, but they mess about with the tempos and afe generally disappointing. Ages ago I urged that a group of local singers should do these Tudor pieces in the proper manner: several Wellington soloists did so over 2YA with conspicuous success, but no one else so far. Still apropos of the Fleet Street Choir:-When I approved of their pronunciation of "Pleni sunt coeli" I referred to "the faddish ‘Pleni sunt chelli." It was a misprint for "Cheeli," which is the usual ecclesiastical pronunciation. . * * * NOTHER choral work to make its first appearance on the air recently was the ode Aotearoa, by J. W. Carr, with words by Clyde Carr, mezzo piano. This was a somewhat lumpy and not very artful piece in six-eight time (with choir and piano right out of balance), wherein the Wellington Harmonic Society failed to communicate the words to the listener except in a few isolated patches where we heard something about "sunshine and shadow," and, of course, the sea. Must one be expected to have preconceived notions of what the Mem‘ber for Timaru would put into verse? There are now four compositions by New Zealanders going by this same title. The ability to make contact with Mozart’s supernal profundities is what makes real: Mozart-playing, and Frederick Page had it when he played a piano sonata in B Flat from 4YA. It was G. B. Shaw’s complaint in the ’90’s that conductors opened their Mozart scores and plunged into what they thought was just a mass of scales and arpeggios, diatonic discords and ingenious resolutions. And sad to say, the 1YA orchestra’s performance of the 39th Symphony in E Flat gave just that impression. The piano sonata from 4YA was full of gently blowing horns, soft clarinets moving in thirds, tone qualities sublimely conveyed through the keyboard instrument to whieh properly they are foreign. The symphony, for all its real French horns, clarinets and strings, was as dull as a book of Czerny exercises. The notion that Mozart is "all little tiddly bits" is the prime heresy of our day, found among persons who adore Chopin for just those qualities which he has in common with Eric Coates, or those who worship Racltmaninoff for just those things which make him akin to Samuel Goldwyn.