Poverty Amid Plenty

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 347, 15 February 1946, Page 8

Poverty Amid Plenty

songs, sung from 4YA by Pat Woods, came just at the time when I was ‘reading some reminiscences of this composer; and looking at the bibliography of his works, I found no fewer than fifty-six songs. Since the "Songs of Sun and Shade" sung in this recital are such excellent examples of what ColeridgeTaylor could write for solo voice, I wondered why more singers do not choose to perform his songs. The total of his output was 82 compositions with Opus numbers, besides the 56 songs, pianoforte, violir®’ and ’céllo solos, anthems, part-songs, and orchestral works published and unpublished. This amounts to a considerable sum-total, all of it worth hearing, since the composer’s wife tells us "Idealism caused him to burn many of the compositions which he con. sidered were not up to his best standard." With so much to choose from, then, why do we hear on the radio only the Four Characteristic Waltzes, Petite Suite de Concert, and Hiawatha Ballet Music? Why is the exquisite "Tale of Old Japan" not heard more often? It is some years since it was given in Dunedin by the Leech Lyric Choir, but ‘anyone who heard it will recall the delight of that performance. Nobody could

object to its resurrection on account of anti-Japanese feeling; Alfred Noyes has here written a fantastic story whose characters, indeed, inhabit no land more mundane than the cloud-islands of the poet’s own imagination, and the people of his fairy-tale bear no more resemblance to modern Japanese than do the characters in The Mikado.