RECENT MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 193, 5 March 1943, Page 12

RECENT MUSIC

(No. 52:

By

Marsyas

EMNANTS from last week’s survey: 1, An average of 41% hours of printed orchestral programmes comes from 1YX weekly, 3% hours from’ 2YC, 2 from 3YL and 1% from 4YO. 2. In six months, the YA’s broadcast 61 concertos (plus 32 repeats), distributed thus (from north to south), 29, 17, 22, 25. The city auxiliaries broadcast 62 concertos (plus 44 repeats), distributed thus: 39, 31, 18, 18. 3. Internal distribution of content: Over auxiliaries and YA’s together, in the same period (August-January), Walton’s viola concerto had five broadcasts in Auckland and two elsewhere, according to my count. Some of Mozart’s 18 recorded piano concertos had a few hearings spread over the auxiliaries, six on 4YA, one on 3YA (none, that I could trace on 2YA or 1YA); 2YC likes Chopin’s piano concertos. 4. W. McNaught, after making his survey of symphonies in the BBC Listener, was able to say: "They have not been pulled casually from a drawer .. . there is evidence of a steady plan at work .. . the programme makers, can still work out a design for concertgiving, and stick to it.’’ Like the man in the ballad The Port of Many Ships, "Oh I wish, how I wish that I was there!" %* %* % . HE Prospect Before Us, a suite of excerpts from music by William Boyce (1710-1779; wrote Heart of Oak), chosen and orchestrated by Constant Lambert, is a welcome new arrival. The title evidently belongs to the ballet which has been devised at Sadler’s Wells, to employ the music, and should not be connected with Boyce’s intentions, Boyce’s manner of composition, even if it was a bit behind his-own time in style, seems to share with earlier English music that ruggedness that distinguished it from the smoother Italian contemporary product. Such a cocky little tune as that now styled (in the modern ballet version) "The Urchins," is the sort of thing we may not have expected from a composer who represented the beginning of what is supposed to have been a barren period of English music. But that is the slightest of the examples; the rest of The Prospect Betore Us contains some fine music, Lambert has made good use, in his orchestration, of the "Bach trumpet" (or so I take it to be), an instrument whose distinctive tone we associate with the Ecole Normale records of the Brandenburg concertos. a * m [FRENCH and English songs sung from 2YA by Hilda Chudley were most sensitively done. A rich, round voice, faultless pronunciation (particularly of consonants), and a pleasant mannerism of following the initial consonant of an important word wtih a little thrust of the voice, to bring the word to life as it were, made these four songs (Debussy, Michael Head and Stanford), resemble the foxgloves of which she sang- "so utterly enchanted." If all our singers ‘ could sing "the rain drips, drips, drips? , as Hilda Chudley did, we should be better able to endure what they are singing about. :