TAUBER WITH THE ORCHESTRA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 7

TAUBER WITH THE ORCHESTRA

Notable Concert Season Planned for 1948

Sace August 20, when the National Orchestra of the NZBS ended its highly successful opening season, its members have been rehearsing in groups in their home centres, preparing for the 1948 series of concerts. Next year at least three noted artists from overseas will appear as guest performers with the orchestra. One of them will be the tenor Richard Tauber. Isobel Baillie (soprano), who toured New Zealand for the NZBS at the time of the Centennial Musical Festival in 1940, will be another, and the third will be the young New Zealand pianist Richard Farrell, who is at present studying in New York.

EMBERS of the orchestra will start their first annual leave on December 22, returning to rehearsals on January 12. Then, at the beginning of February, the groups in Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin, will join the Wellington section for a month’s. concerted. rehearsing before entering on a comprehensive list of 1948 engagements. Season Will Open in Auckland The new season will open on Tuesday, March 2, in the Auckland Town Hall, when Isobel Baillie will be the guest artist. Three concerts will be given in Auckland, with an innovation by way of .

a popular lunch-hour concert on Wednesday, March 3, in the Town Hall. At a concert on Thursday, March 4, Isobel Baillie will again be the guest artist. On Friday, March 5, the orchestra will return to Wellingtofi to prepare for the first Wellington concert of the new season-in the Town Hall on Wednesday, March 10, with Isobel Baillie again as soloist. On the following day there will be a lunch-hour concert in the Town Hall, and on Friday, March 12, a concert for secondary school pupils, with Miss Baillie as guest artist, will be presented in the afternoon. On Saturday, March 13, another concert will be given by the orchestra in association with the soprano, and a second school concert will be staged with Miss Baillie in solos

on Tuesday, March 16. On Friday, March 19, there will be another lunchhour concert, and on Monday, March 22, one more concert for school pupils, with orchestra alone. The.Otago Celebrations After the Easter holidays, at the end of March, the orchestra will go to Dunedin to take part in the musical portion of the Otago Centennial Celebrations. It will be heard, in the

Dunedin Town Hall, with Isobel Baillie, on Saturday, April 3. Then, on Wednesday, April 7, the orchestra will be associated. with a massed male voice chorus in a programme which will include Stanford’s Songs of the Fleet and David’s The.Desert. On Saturday, April’ 10, a concert programme with orchestra and a combined mixed chorus will include Vaughan Williams’s Festival Te Deum, (continued on next page)

I948 Concert Season

(continued from previous page) for choir, orchestra and organ, Let Us Now Praise, composed by Dr. V. E. Galway, of Dunedin, and Stanford’s The Revenge. Another major work will be Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise symphony. During this concert Isobel Baillie will sing soprano solos with the orchestra, and will also appear as soloist in the Mendelssohn symphony. First Trip to Invercargill Invercargill music-lovers will see the National Orchestra for the first time at a concert in the Civic Theatre on Tuesday, April 13, with Isobel Baillie as guest artist. On Wednesday, April 14, a concert for school pupils will be given in the afternoon, and on the following evening, Thursday, April 15, there will be another orchestral concert, also with Miss Baillie as soloist. On Saturday, April 17, and Monday, April 19, the concert given in Dunedin on April 10 will be repeated, with the same soloists but with. an Invercargill choir. The orchestra’s first 1948 visit to Christchurch will follow shortly on the Irivercargill season; and details of the arrangements which are now being made will be. announced later. In the latter part of the year there will be further concerts in-the North Island. All these arrangements are tentative at present. With the itinerary planned so far ahead, minor changes may be caused by unforeseen. circumstances, but the NZBS hopes that no alterations will | be necessary. Solo recitals and performances with the orchestra will be given in June by Richard Farrell, who became well known in this country as a child pianist, and who has now spent several years overseas. He has been under the tuition of Madame Samaroff Stokowski, of New York, formerly the wife of the conductor Leopold Stokowski, and herself a pianist. and teacher of considerable standing--she is head of the piano department of the Philadelphia Conservatory. During his sojourn overseas Farrell has made notable progress as a concert pianist. In September, Richard Tauber will make a tour of New Zealand under contract to the NZBS. Though he is so well known as a tenor, Tauber was conductjing at the age of 18, and during the

last few years he: has appeared in London as a conductor. He is most familiar to New Zealanders through his broadcast recordings and his film appearances. Tauber studied singing with Carl Beines, and made his operatic debut in Chemnitz. He was engaged at the Dresden Hofoper in 1913, and subsequently sang in Munich, Berlin and Vienna. He has also appeared in London and has made extensive tours of America. In Central Europe he has a special reputation as a Mozart singer. Details of Farrell’s and Tauber’s programmes have aot yet been settled, but it is expected that the tenor, as well as giving solo recitals throughout the coun- . try, will make some appearances as guest artist with the orchestra and also as®*its guest conductor.