To be Sung on Cook Strait

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 311, 8 June 1945, Page 9

To be Sung on Cook Strait

|T is good to hear a studio orchestra pressed into service, as at 2YA the other night, accompanying singers in Mozart and Verdi, where the piano is but an uncomfortable makeshift. But the following evening 1YA’s orchestra entered the traditional province of the piano and accompanied Rena Edwards in songs by Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert. I try to keep an open mind about transcriptions, but I am sad when I have to forgo one of the loveliest pieces of all piano writing, the accompaniment to Schubert’s "To be Sung on the Waters." Yet, I had to admit it was still a water-song, though of another kind. Those rising and falling semiquavers under the pianist’s right hand are the ripples of a lake; taken by the strings they bore a strong resemblance to the sounds of a high wind whistling in the rigging, and a great ship straining to ride the waves. After all, we are not always drifting idly on still waters; sterner and rougher journeys must be undertaken, and they too are worthy of incidental music. This, I thought, is how Schubert might have written: for those moments when the Rangatira leaves behind her the last shelter of Port Nicholson, draws abreast of Pencarrow Head and runs full smack into a Southerlv.