Holiday With Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 531, 26 August 1949, Page 12

Holiday With Music

HANKS to the existence- of friends of an English singer in Hawke’s Bay and a -brother of an English pianist in ‘Tasmania, New Zealanders will have the chance during the ‘next 'two months of hearing concerts and | broadcasts by two experienced English | musicians-Joan Coxon, soprano, and Isabel Bedlington, pianist and accomMiss Coxon and Miss Bedling- | ton, who met and became friends dur_ing war-time tours with C.E.M.A. (now ‘known as the British Arts Council), have given a great many concerts to_gether in England, particularly, in the years since the war, for’ schools and ‘music clubs. Earlier this year they decided that it would be pleasant to combine an antipodean holiday visit to Miss Bedlington’s brother in Tasmania and : Miss Coxon’s friends in Hawke’s Bay with a concert tour. The one evil they wanted to avoid was a conducted tour _-they wanted to be free to spend extra time anywhere they wanted it. : "So you just took a chance and started the holiday?"--we met at’ 2YA one morning last week and strolled out into the pleasant sun to talk. It was a good morning for a holiday. "Well, not exactly," Miss Coxon said. "We found a booklet that some Ausi private schools had put out to advertise their prospectuses at the time came into the war, when British people in Malaya were sending their children to Australia for safety. We got some idea of what the schools were like from that and wrote to some of them.

On the replies that came back we decided to venture out; and it has been a marvellous experience." "Yes, really quite extraordinarily interesting. And we've enjoyed it immensely," said Miss Bedlington. "We've been in schools away out in ‘the bush’ and we’ve found the most wonderful audiences among those children, so keen." "Of course that’s the teachers’ doing, largely," said Miss Bedlington. "The kind of teaching does make such a difference." "But all the same," Miss Coxon insisted, "some of those children who come from the very great distancessome of them travel for two and three days before they reach their schoolsare wonderfully keen and interested and receptive in themselves." "And what programmes do you sing and play to these children?" "I generally start with Elizabethan songs, including the Anne Boleyn one; then my friend does something about the same period, perhaps Bach or Scarlatti; then I do a group of lieder, Schubert probably, and at the end some folk songs perhaps with modern settings. And my friend of course plays groups from the various periods." "Oh, yes, the romantics always; often Chopin, and generally I manage to slip in some of the less well-known Chopin and ‘avoid the things I hope never to hear again for ten years,’ Miss Bedlington spoke feelingly; "but Chopin is the pianist’s musician, he really is. There are some really lovely things, but they are not the ones that are asked for, of course." "But we feel an if we sing and play unfamiliar things now and then they will gradually become more acceptable," Miss Coxon said. "Of course, we can’t

alwdys please the few-the few who write asking for something new and dif-ficult-and displease all the others. So we try to mix it." ASKED if they talked to the school " children about the music. "We always explain our programmes," Miss Coxon said. "Perhaps we say something quite short about the composer, what sort of life went on in the time He lived, or I give a translation of a song if it is not in English. I sing the Schubert lieder in English, in very good translations I had done specially. But some others I paraphrase for the chjldTen." Miss Coxon has with her three old German songs which she finds especially suitable for music clubs, Adult Education or University ‘groups. One is from the 16th Century by Hans Sachs, cobbler, mastersinger, original model for Wagner’s opera. The other two are dance songs by Hans Leo Hassler, also from the 16th Century. Miss Bedlington plans to leave for Tasmania again in October, but Miss Coxon will stay on till January and hopes to sing in Dunedin. In the new year she will join Miss Bedlington again in Victoria to fulfil engagements in schools there. They have already been heard in studio recitals frem 2YA and 2YZ, and next month they will be heard from 1YZ (September 12), 1YA (September 16 and 21), and 1XH (September 25). They will broadcast later from other National stations.