A "NEW MOVEMENT" IN MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 420, 11 July 1947, Page 6

A "NEW MOVEMENT" IN MUSIC

Boyd Neel Orchestra is Spearhead

VERY New Zealander to whom music means some- . thing must go and hear the Boyd Neel Orchestra while it is here if he possibly can; and he must stretch that "possibly" as fat as it will go. That’s poor advice to give people who live far away from the few pleces the orchestra will visit, I know; and it comes rather badly from someone who has already greedily listened to two rehearsals and two concerts, But I believe that the Boyd Neel Orchestra is a phenomenon of a kind that occurs,only rarely in cultural history, and then "only in one of those situations where many circumstances coincide and make it look as if history, too, has gone in for Planning. "Epoch-making" is the usual aah "Epoch-made is the word I would use; and because Britain now has an organisation called the British Council which

intends to see that British Life and Thought is exhibited outside the United Kingdom, it becomes possible for us, who have so far been mere listeners-in on the remotest edge of western civilisation, to observe this epoch-made manifestation of western music just as if we had the same privileges as those who live in one of the centres of origin. As it turns out (or has in Australia) our demand justifies the experiment. The orchestra’s four is a practicable thing ("a paying proposition") and all we have to doff our caps to the British Council for is the chance to prove it. We do have to say "thank you for the lovely present," but at least we can hold our heads up, feeling we deserved it. (Or Australians can. I am only presuming that New Zealanders will be able to also.) Rehearsal I went into the Auckland Town Hall on the Saturday morning before the orchestra’s first concert there. Cleaners

were making a clatter with buckets and mops in the vestibule, and men with feather dusters were going along the rows flicking the dust of the previous night’s symphony concert off the seats. The Boyd Neel orchestra was hovering among the last suspenseful chords of an adagio in Handel’s Concerto Grosso No. 1. Just as I sat down, they came to that question-mark that holds you ready for what is to follow. Then Boyd ---- ne

Neel started them on the allegro. That movement happens to be one of those fugal ones that dart off into what Boyd © Neel would want me to call "a livety tune." As a matter of fact it has a touch of Three Blind Mice about it, just before the second "entry" (where the next lot of instruments come in), and Boyd Neel had decided to see how they ran. Frederick Grinke started the chase, the others followed with incredible zest, and the conductor stepped down, walked

through the orchestra, up the choir seats, and round to the far side of the Circle, making for the back of the hall. He walked along through the alternate shafts of shadow and morning light, almost as if he were turning his back on some miraculous creation that had just sprung from his hand eager for life and was revelling in Speed as its first experience. I know that no mgment in music was ever more exciting for me -I never did see such a thing in my life." I had heard the same kind of thing through gramophone records (and I had owned some of the Boyd Neel recordings). But this time I had gone to see how it was done, aware that I knew less than half of what there is to know about such an orchestra. What I saw led me to a clearer understanding of my own beliefs about the kind of music Boy Neel plays, which largely as a result of his enterprise has become the platform of a sort of New Movement in music. Force and Virtue It is, I think, good for us to be reminded that that mighty creation of the 19th Century, the "Full Orchestra," is not the only medium for the prevailing musical expression of the time. In no way do I suggest that it should be aban--doned. Obviously it never can be. But we must perceive, as England has, that between the full orchestra and the chamber music medium there is not an empty space at all, but another medium that has both the force of the one and the virtue of the other-the string orch playing music from this unlimited s that Boyd Neel has rescued from negle I believe this music has something for us, specially appropriate at this time; which is not to be had from cham music or symphonic music, and which we badly need. It happens that in the same week in which I heard the Boyd Neel, I was also watching rehearsals of our own National Symphony Orchestra under Eugene Goossens. This orchestra is capable of playing much music that

we urgently need, and capable of playing it. well. Its existence is an unqualified Good Thing. But as a sat behind the conductor’s back during a rehearsal of Wagner’s Magic Fire Music, I found myself thinking of the ‘violinists slashing away, bar after bar ‘(so it seemed to me), at something which -they could only suppose to have some meaning within the whole. Mass and Boss Well, Wagner wrote a lot ef great music,-I don’t like it, but a lot of people do. And it. conveyed vast and " mecessary truths at the time it was written. It may do still. But I think that Wagner, and a lot of the other music that members of a symphony orchestra anywhere in the world have to play nowadays, makes nonsense of some good honest musical instincts. That business in the Magic Fire Music asks for, and often gets, mass mentality to serve it and a boss mentality to run it. Where would the individual human mentality end up if there was practically no place for it but in chamber music (which is not a popular kind of music and thérefore provides no living except for the very few top-rank players who can exist for it and by it)? I advocate nothing-no abolitions, no Save’ Our Music funds, no Anti-Wagner Leagues. I only urge that people should expose themsélves to the knowledge of what may be had from the kind of music Boyd Neel has brought ‘to us at this moment. a 4 OOS TS eee ee Cece eo ee

Looking at the Boyd Neel players in action (or better still, at work) you see that an orchestra of that kind is a human problem. The Wagnerian Orchestra is an inhuman problem. (Imagine flying it round the world, booking it in at hotels ...) I’m all for human problems in the arts these days. There are enough of the others in the rest of life. The air about these 18 young musicians (nine men and nine women) resembles nothing as much as the atmosphere of a class of very eager students at a tutorial under a good lecturer, They have that particular kind of good sense that enables them to laugh best at the things that mean most to them. When they are taking their work really seriously (that is, making headway) they get great fun out of. it. Rehearsal-time is punctuated with plenty of laughter. "And they share in the music to the same degree that chamber-music players do. The leader, the first ’cello, and the first viola all seem to have a natural right to stop the music at any point if they don’t like it and start an argument. The result, when you hear it, relieves you of any doubts as to whether this is the proper way to go about things; the result is unity to perfection, the most lively and invigorating-and sensitive-playing you have ever heard. That seems to me to establish that there is a field in music where this particular brand of democracy which is said to be typical of the crazy English, does work. And that’s worth knowing, when it was forgotten for so long.

The secret of course is all in the personality of Boyd Neel himself. But it’s no use asking him how he does it. I myself think some of his remarks about music and musicians are misleading. He insists, for instance, that musicians are ordinary people. You never saw a less ordinary group of people than his own remarkable selection. How they can dash round the world as they do and tense themselves up to the pitch of vitality that Auckland saw and heard the other night, I just don’t know. Boyd Neel is not a string player himself. That makes nonsense of all the trite sayings about conductors who are string players, "bringing to their task that understanding which only ... " etc., etc. In one full rehearsal I didn’t once hear him refer to bowing or even talk.as if the players used instruments to make their sounds. And there’s very little talk of "those semi-quavers" or "that pair of triplets." There’s plenty of "pa-yum-pum-pum" and "tiddle-iddle-iddle," etc. (Boyd Neel has a very good conductor’s voice, all ranges stocked). The section leaders do it too, freely. I even heard this happen at one point: Neel tiddled a piece of Mozart, which he wanted to go over; Grinke played it, and Neel said, with all the "amateurishness" you can imagine, "Yes, that part." Sometimes he is unable to express

precisely what he wants from them, Then, they have to come forward and help him find it. And that is just one part of the secret. Fun and Grins Neel’s memory is prodigious. He conducts without score, and with only a space of air in front of him, which he sometimes seems to be cutting or shaping, as if the music itself were a mass, having dimensions. At rehearsal, he will say (without reference to the score) "The last five bars again, please," knowing exactly where that will make them begin. At performance, his movements have a beauty that I wouldn’t attempt to describe. But you see hardly anything from behind. It is all devoted to the players-including the grins, at places like the fruity waltz-tune in Tchaikovski’s Serenade. And there is no monkeybusiness with the fingers. Often the left hand hangs quite limp, because there is nothing for it to do. Sometimes his baton flies out of hig hand. If it does, there will be another one in it before you realise what has happened. And where does he keep it, if he has no music stand? Well, there’s a nice little game to play when you go to see the orchestra.’ Hint; batons have a cork knob for a handle. Forfeit two points if you have to use opera glasses to find that spare one.

Nemo