NATIONAL ORCHESTRA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 407, 11 April 1947, Page 5

NATIONAL ORCHESTRA

»Sir,-i was unfortunate in hearing only twoxthirds of the National Orchestra’s first concert, with indifferent radio reception. It would therefore be impossible for me to express an opinion about the standard of playing without indulging in a quite ostentatious display of pretentiousness and irresponsibility, It would be wrong of me even to accept the word of Dr. Beaglehole (whom I suspect of having considerable taste but very little appetite) about the night’s doings. There is, however, one point in his review of the concert on which a prima facie case rests, and that is the matter of the programme. At its first appearance the Orchestra would, I agree, have done well to present a solidly classical programme — perhaps Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven. The music that was played was nearly all marginal stuff, with Wagner and Butterworth rubbing shoulders, and altogether too much noise and colour and virtuosity; a sort of Trimalchio’s banquet rather than a wellordered meal of sound victuals. I am a little apprehensive about this tendency to make the most of the bigness of a symphony orchestra, and to substitute virtuosity for meaning. Something of the same attitude appeared to be evident in one of the annotations supplied by the NZBS for Lili Kraus’s second Auckland concert last week. We: read, with some astonishment, that the "light-weight piano texture" of Mozart was due chiefly to "the composer’s outlook on life; he was physically and mentally a_lightweight, never given to Beethoven’s thunderous introspection, though more sensitive to the: very things which troubled Beethoven." We then heard Mozart’s Sonata in D Major (K.576)! If the comment I have quoted is not merely self-contradictory, it can only mean something like -this, that Mozart was a "mental light-weight" because in his piano compositions he didn’t make a lot of noise, and never became murky. This seems to me to be very odd. Are we supposed to rank Liszt and Rachmaninoff as "mental heavy-weights’’?

A. R.

D. FAIRBURN

( Devonport).

Sir-There is a tendency among’ would-be critics these days to substitute sophistry for criticism, to indulge their clannish superiority at the expense of their subject and their readers. Latest to reach this stage is your contributor J. C. Beaglehole. In his rush to demonstrate his own aestheticism your contributor has merely revealed his lamentable inadequacy as a critic. We must, insists Dr. Beaglehole, be spartan in our criticism of the orchestra; stab it to the heart again and again; dissect it; restrain our very natural desire to applaud, and trust that the players will return to work stimulated and encouraged once they have been damned with faint praise. If this is J.C.B.’s philosophy, then I say he is the wrong man for the critic’s job. Let us criticise by all means, but let us temper our criticism with an honest appreciation of what is being done for us. J. C. Beaglehole doubts whether a nation has been born, but he is willing to wait and see. Let him implement these sentiments, then, by curbing for the present his precipitate urge to stab and dissect -whether it be occasioned by partisan disapproval of the present conductor or not — until our symphony orchestra is something more than one concert old.

On the other hand, self-assured as he is, our critic leaves us many a loophole through which to attack him. Manifest among these is the absence-apart from an oblique reference to gramophone re-cords-of any standard of comparison. The first-rate recording is one in which all orchestral imbalance has been eliminated by skilled technicians, so that it demonstrates no satisfactory standard of comparison; and our critic saw fit to give us no other indication of the yardstick by which he has judged the orchestra. The solitary fact that does emerge is that having secured seats that were apparently "unsuitable, he spent a considerable time cantering about the hall during the performance in an attempt to discover the ideal listening position. An intriguing, if somewhat unsatisfactory, way of enfoying a symphony con-cert-especially if one has been commissioned to write a review of the performance, ‘ Then we have an embittered protest about the programme. I don't pretend to be satisfied with it all, not for one minute, but I don’t feel. that my personal preference ought to have been imposed on everyone else, I hope and expect that in due course the orchestra will play Beethoven and Haydn and Mozart; but I feel that there must have been few people who left the hall without hearing at least one work that they honestly enjoyed. It would also be rather interesting to know who is to select the "first-rate" programme on which Dr. Beaglehole waxes so eloquent. Every work after all has the potential capacity to arouse intense dislike and profound admiration, which means that a programme selected by Dr. Beaglehole could) send other critics from the hall to compose impassioned essays of condemnation. Even granting the possibility of the nebulous "first-rate" performances of first-rate programmes is both irrelevant and presumptuous. J. C. Beaglehole was, in short, being just what he assured us he wasn’t-all highbrow and ivory tower. In conclusion, sir, I am surprised ‘that The Listener, which purports to be New Zealand’s official broadcasting journal, and which studiously avoids criticising all other departments of radio, should open its columns to an inimical critic when it should at the present time be doing all in its power to foster this splendid new cultural asset.

L. D.

CONSTABLE

(Lyall Bay).

(We don’t quite know what our corres--pondent means by "all other departments of tadio." If he means plays, talks, singing, variety, and so on, he has only to read The Listener to kfiow that they are criticised in our columns every week.-Ed.)