ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 505, 25 February 1949, Page 5

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

Sir,-I fully agree with Joseph McEvoy that a grave omission has occurred in that the Wellington group of the National Symphony Orchestra has not yet given us a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. His suggestion that the players should manage both the instrumental and vocal parts has the merit of originality and opens up new vistas for the work of the orchestra. Even the hardest worked horn player should have enough breath left to join in the chorus when he is not otherwise occupied. As for the violinists, they are simply wasting their time by sitting and playing, when their vocal chords could resound in giving us some of the finest music Beethoven ever wrote. But why stop at that? Any violinist worth his salt would often combine the first and second violin parts by the simple expedient of double stopping, thus freeing some of his colleagues to augment other sections of the orchestra. Could we not emulate those great show artists who manage to play the mouthorgan, the piano, and the drums simultaneously, by introducing the same principle into symphonic music? Surely a trained musician should be able to manage two instruments at the same time! I always finds the enforced idleness to which the tympanist is subjected between his often widely spaced entries most eggravating. Most musicians can play the piano. The tympanist may not be’ very eminent as a pianist, but surely he could play the solo part in a piano concerto instead of doing nothing. After all, what Liszt can do, he can do.

VERSATILE

(Wellington).