RECENT MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 180, 4 December 1942, Page 2

RECENT MUSIC

~~4 (No. 39:

By

Marsyas

was_performed by the 3YA Orchestra conducted by Will Hutchens. As the 3YA orchestra does not possess (or does not employ) two oboes, two bassoons, and two horns, nor even one of any of these, the work was bound to start at a certain tonal disadvantage. In the actuality it began at another and worse disadvantage — the opening figure, the famous V, was ponderously thumped out, one beat per quaver, and this in spite of the direction of Allegro con brio an inch or two away on the conductor’s score. The man who gives the "don’ts" in the Air Force Morse broadcasts could have shown them how to "send" that V: (‘Don’t use the whole forearm to depress the key-you must use a light movement of the wrist .. ." etc.) In the remainder of the work very clean playing (arising perhaps out of aural familiarity) failed to compensate for the absence of those three distinctive instruments which contribute the most meaningful individual utterances to the work. B vse Fifth Symphony * * ROM 1YA the Westminster Trio (two violins and piano) gave a good recital. Though reception was poor and the

-- piano badly placed in relation to the microphone, enough of a Handel Sonata in G Minor came through to afford the impression that the players Were enjoying the music itself just as much as I was. They followed it with a Sonata a tre by the man of whom Handel said: "He knows no more counterpoint than my cook." Gluck’s operas, as it happens, are still performed, whereas Handel’s are not-not that this disproves Handel. But it would be as foolish to look for Gluck’s known greatness in a Sonata a tre as to look for Wagner’s in a string quartet (if ever he had written one), and it is true that this sonata sounded poorly after Handel in G Minor. Still, there were pleasant moments that distracted the ear from the concentration of waiting for something as broad and serene as Orpheus. HICH reminds me that the Christ‘church Orpheus Choir sang two madrigals. The familiar Silver Swan (Gibbons) w&s delivered as a sort of dirge, heavy and brutish. Perhaps it was of such a performance that Coleridge wrote: "Swans sing before they die; "twere no bad thing Did certain persons die before they sing." On the other hand, Flora gave me fairest flows ers was lightly and happily sung.