Concerto for Colin Horsley

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 470, 25 June 1948, Page 7

Concerto for Colin Horsley

) ENNOX BERKELEY, one of ) the more gifted of the younger English composers, has written a piano concerto especially for the New Zealand pianist Colin Horsley, who is back in England after his concert tour of the Dominion last year. The concerto will be given its world premiere at a Prom- | enade concert in London next August, _and Colin Horsley, who has the sole _ performing rights for two years, will | play it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Basil Cameron. The man who brought Colin Horsley out last year, Val Drewry, is back here again making arrangements for the forthcoming tour by Moura Lympany, and he told The Listener something about Colin Horsley’s movements since he returned to England. He had been extremely busy and in one concert season had performed 15 different concertos, which was pretty heavy going. Horsley had also recorded five Chopin studies recently, and he had further engagements to appear with the BBC Symphony and the London Symphony Orchestras this year. Mr. Drewry hoped to bring him out to New Zealand again in 1950 for another tour, when he would be able to give the first New Zealand performance of the. Berkeley concerto. Lennox Berkeley was one of the new generation of English composers. of whom Benjamin Britten was the most outstanding, and his talents were such that he would probably be more widely known were it not for the fact that he was rather overshadowed by Britten’s brilliance. Berkeley was born near Oxford in 1903 and studied under Nadia

Boulanger in Paris. His main works included an oratorio (Jonah), a symphony, a ballet (The Judgment of Paris), and several small works for strings and piano. Arrangements have been made for Moura Lympany to give 12 studio broadcasts for the NZBS, the first being from 1YA on‘Sunday, July 11. Recitals from other National stations will follow. Mr. Drewry said that Moura Lympany had recently been made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, and had also just completed a film for the Gainsborough studios called Flowers for the Living, in which she appeared under her own name. She would. leave England by air and was expected to arrive at Auckland on about July 10. Her last concert before leaving was scheduled to take place at the Covent Garden Opera House. She had made several new recordings in recent months-which New Zealand listeners would shortly be able to hear. They included the Second Book of the Brahms Paganini Variations and the Liszt E Flat Concerto. =