Warwick Braithwaite Was Impressed

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 418, 27 June 1947, Page 7

Warwick Braithwaite Was Impressed

ARWICK BRAITHWAITE, the Dunedin‘born conductor, who is now visiting the Dominion after many years in Great Britain, dashed off to Hamilton an hour or two after his flying boat landed at Auckland, and when we rang him there he had left for Tauranga. In the end, The Listener had a few minutes with-him when he came back to Auckland to catch the plane for Wellington. It was the morning after the first Auckland concert of the National Orchestra of the NZBS, to which he had listened by radio in Hamilton. Mr. Braithwaite was deeply impressed with, the quality of, what he had heard. "As a matter of fact I was quite emotional about it," he said. "To think that New Zealanders can do this-which is what I’ve been waiting for! It was really very moving."

He had admired the . strings enormously, he went on, and thought some of the wind remarkably fine. In particular he mentioned the horns in Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, which includes some very exacting horn passages. "Only it was a pity that some of the instruments are missing yet," he said. "I hope there will be a bass clarinet and cor anglais before very long. Any oboe player can play a cor anglais." Mr. Braithwaite was conducting opera in England just before he left. (The Listener recently published a photograph taken during a performance in March). And he had been making recordings. "Terribly hard work. I was glad to be out of it," he said. He has recently been in Australia, where he conducted six orchestras in a seven weeks’ tour.

He hopes while he is in New Zealand to conduct something by Douglas Lilburn, who is now on the staff of Victoria University College. He gave the first. performance of Lilburn’s concert overture "Aotearoa" at the Centennial Matinee held in London, at which New Zealanders commemorated the Centennial. Mr, Braithwaite will also conduct an arrangement for orchestra of Alfred Hill’s "Waiata . Poi." He met Mr. Hill for the first time while he was in Sydney recently, and obtained the arrangement from him, Listeners will hear it as an encore at concerts conducted by Mr. Braithwaite. He will be in. New. Zealand until September, and then will go back to Australia, and to South Africa for further engagements.