Virginals and Recorder

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 393, 3 January 1947, Page 10

Virginals and Recorder

"AND so to bed, my mind mightily satisfied with this evening’s work," is the quotation which closes the programme The Musical Diversions of Samuel Pepys, heard from 2YA recently. And the same mighty ‘satisfaction is likely to be felt by listeners to this programme by Zillah and Ronald Castle. For while we can enter freely into most of Pepys’s other occupations and delights-scientific, amatory, and potatory techniques have altered little, in essence, in 300 years-it is seldom possible for us to hear the same sweet sounds of music which made "so much demand over the soul of a man" that Pepys confessed himself ravished by them, In this programme we _ hear virginals, violin, recorder: instruments Pepys was familiar with, playing music he might have listened to or perhaps played himself. The programme was compounded with skill. Dance music at a New Year’s Eve Ball at Court followed the: simple folk air of the milkmaid’s song, and in only one case did the music fail to measure up to the expectations suggested by the diary excerpt. (I feel that Pepys must have

been exalté for some other reason if the pleasing but undistinguished woodwind music from the playhouse had such power to ravish him away.) In execution, too, the recital was masterly and at no time did Mr. Castle’s performance on, the-virginals suggest birdcages and toasting-forks.