NEWS OF MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 508, 18 March 1949, Page 16

NEWS OF MUSIC

( By Airmail — Special to "The Listener" ) February 19 HE Fifth Symphony of Edmund Rubbra, who is now 47, has just been given its first. performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and a second in the Third Programme the following .evening. It is strong, solid music; sometimes. its .composer’ seems. a_ little heavy-handed with the brass, but never crudely or vulgarly so, and that impressién may have been given only because the work had not been rehearsed at all three days before the performance (when I happened to meet the composer, and naturally asked how the rehearsals were going). On a couple of hearings, even with the help of an analytical talk by Mr. Rubbra, with thematic illustrations, it is difficult to discover more about a symphony by such an individual composer than that the language he is speaking sounds sincere, genuine to himself, and free from the more obvious faults such -as artificial working, unassimilated "in-

fluences," etc. Indeed, Mr. Rubbra’s own talk might have led one to expect such things, especially the artificial working, since his own advance explanation was full of such phrases as "arrived at," "derived from" and so on; but the music itself gave no such impression, At times it sounds like Shostakovich without the vulgarity. In form, the symphony is what he calls a_triptych, a kind of sandwich, that is, the bread being two quick movements (each with a slow introduction) and the filling a very exciting scherzo. ¥Mr. Rubbra was born in Northampton in 1901, and became a railway clerk at Northampton station when he was 14. Five years later he won a scholarship at Reading University; then he went on another scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Hoist and Vaughan Williams. He lives in the country, and has a music room built on a hill, looking out over a most moving landscape. His Fourth Symphony was played at a Promenade Concert in 1942. The first gyllable of his name rhymes with tub.

S England about to renounce the drama and take to opera? In the East End of London there is a popular theatre, the People’s Palace, which reopened last October, reconstructed, and holding 1,600 people. The idea was to use it for both plays and music, and to have a permanent resident company for plays if possible. Very boldly, as was thought, the choice for the opening was Britten’s new version of the Beggars’ Opera; then there was his Albert Herring; and the first four plays included two of Shaw’s-In Good King Charles’s Bonny Days and The Devil’s Disciple. Now the Carl Rosa opera company is there. For the Britten operas, attendance averaged 1,100 to 1,200 a night; for the plays, great enthusiasm, but the house only a third ,full; for the Carl Rosa company, house packed out. The Manager, Mr. Coronate Lowe (born on Edward VII’s coronation day) interprets the Carl Rosa boom as loyalty to old friends, because the Carl Rosa was there the night the blitz closed the theatre. But the directo. and producer (Matthews Forsyth) evidently takes another view, for he proposes to put on Rutland Boughton’s Immortal Hour for the first time in London since 1932. The idea of the resident acting company has been dropped for the time being.

‘THE news of Dr. William Walton’s marriage to Senorita Gil, in Buenos Aires, has also brought out into the open the news of a new composition from this very seldom-heard composera violin sonata which he has been writing for Menuhin. He expects to have it. finished soon after he returns to London. %* %* * HREE works were commissioned by the BBC (one to each of its programmes) to celebrate the birth of Prince Charles, and they were all played

together at the Winter Proms, which have just finished. Gordon Jacob’s Festal March was written for the Light Programme, an Elgarish kind of noise with a pretty ordinary sort of tune in the middle; it went ‘on for too long. Herbert Howells wrote two dance movements for the Home Service, which also induced restiveness, though they were amusing and quaint; and Michael Tippett wrote an excellent Birthday Suite in five movements, using traditional tunes (Helston Furry, among others). This was intended for the Third Programme, Perhaps, in the manner of Third Programme specials, this one will be heard again. But the a might, be dee ti aa ‘THE pike suchis: 6 nto Orchestra is to come to England for a four weeks’ tour in May. The players have agreed to come for their normal wages plus £100 "spending money." The New York correspondent of the News Chronicle says they will give 28 concerts in four weeks, which sounds incredible, but perhaps is true. Eugene Ormandy is to conduct. * * * F it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Phonographic Performance Ltd., a company which represents the big recording companies, has forbidden theatres to use gramophone records for the formality of playing God Save the

King before or after a play, and the first play to be affected by this is Breach of Marriage, opening this week, which gave the Sunday papers something round which to scratch up a feature story. Interval music is also affected, since it has been the custom to use records for that too. But cinemas are not under the ban. The company says it "could not expect cinemas to have an orchestra." By implication, it does expect legitimate theatres to have one, and this of course is the object,of the ban, which may be assumed to have the support of the Musicians’ Union. The Manchester Guardian calls this Knavish Tricks, to interfete with such an endearing custom. "A roll on a drum is heard, or the amplified scratch of needle upon record, and an audience stumbles to its feet, boxes of chocolates and opera glasses flutter to the floor, handbags burst open, programmes take wings. When the rite is ¢oncluded, with late arrivals gasping in the aisles, or a few denizens of Finchley stealing furtively away to catch a train, the traditionalist may taste again the memory of a September night in 1745 when Lon- don heard the news of the defeat at Prestonpans and at both the Drury Lane and Covent Garden Theatres the future National Anthem was sung." But no more, until the theatre managers think

out their solution.

A.

A.