Plucked Strings

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 9

Plucked Strings

~~ DR: CHARLES BURNEY, writing in 1805 of the introduction of the pianoforte; said "We were unwilling to give up the harpsichord, and thought the tone of the pianoforte spiritless and insipid, till experience and better instruments vanquished our prejudices; and the expression and chiaroscuro in performing music expressly composed for that instrument made amends for the want of brilliancy in the tone so much that we soon found the scratching of the quill in the- harpsichord intolerable, compared with the tone produced by the hammer." Listening to the recital by Zillah and Ronald Castle from 2YA last Thursday "Handel’s Music as He Heard It," I was conscious of progressing in the opposite direction from Dr. Burney. At first I found the tintinnabulation of the harpsichord an irritation, but by the second item, the Sonata in D Major, I was almost won over to the harpsichord because*of what seemed to me the elfin brilliance of its tone. On the other hand, I found it difficult to connect Handel as we know him (alas, our jaded palates) with these horns of elfland faintly blown by the Castles. So a critic 50 years on, reared on a diet of Shakespeare in gorgeous technicolour, may chance to witness a performance of Hamlet in Modern Dress, performed in broad daylight in the middle of Western Springs Stadium (Hamlet as Shakespeare Saw ‘Him), and may turn homewards muttering into his beard, "It may be Art, but it isn’t Shakespeare."