THREE CONCERTS, THREE CONCERTOS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 539, 21 October 1949, Page 24

THREE CONCERTS, THREE CONCERTOS

Orchestra’s Return Visit to Wellington

ELLINGTON concertgoers will have three more opportunities to hear the National Orchestra of the NZBS before the. 1949. season ends for them. The three concerts will be given in the Town: Hall this Saturday, October 22, on Tuesday, November 1, and on Saturday, November 5-on each occasion with a guest artist. This Saturday the solo pianist will be Aleksandr Helzaann, who will play Rachmaninoff’s. Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30-a work which drew enthusiastic applause when he performed it in Christchurch on October,6. The other items on this programme will be the "Leonora No. 3" Overture of Beethoven and Symphony No. 1 in C Minor by Brahms. The programme for November 1 will consist of the Anacreon Overture by Cherubini, "Prelude and Angels’ Farewell" from Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius; Concerto for ’Cello and Orchestra by E. J. Moeran, with Peers Coetmore as soloist; Prelude and Fugue by Dr. Harold Finlay, of Wellington; and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in C Minor. It will be the first performance in Wellington of the’ Moeran Concerto and the first public performance anywhere of Dr. Finlay’s work. The final Wellington concert programme on November 5 will include the Grieg A Minor Concerto, with Cara Hall, of Wellington, as solo pianist; Mozart’s overture to The Marriage of Figaro; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica") and Prelude to Acts 1 and 3 of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Cara Hall, who will be making her first appearance with the National Orchestra, was born in Christchurch and received her .training at the Royal Academy of Music, London. Though she has many .public and broadcast appearances.to her credit both here, in England and in Australia, her. greatest

interest lies in giving recitals to children, and she has an increasing reputation for work in this field. Peers Coetmore, the ’cellist who will be heard dn November 1, is a visitor to New Zealand. She was born in Lincolnshire, of Irish-Welsh parents, and studied first at the Royal Academy of Music under Walenn, afterwards schooling herself in the Casals method under Eisenberg in Spain. To complete her musical education she took lessons from Feuermann in Zurich. She made her public debut at the age of 18 and almost immediately began to carry out engagements for the BBC. She has given recitals in London, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Belfast, Eastbourne, Folkestone, Torquay, and so on, and has appeared in Holland and Egypt. During the first three years of the second world war she drove an ambulance in London and toured for ENSA, playing to troops and factory workers in England, Scotland and Northern Iréland. She spent nine months in the Middle East and went to Germany in June, 1945. Impressed by her playing at a concert during the war years, E. J. Moeran, the British composer, wrote a concerto for her. Before it was ready for performance, she and the composer were married, in July, 1945. Her repertoire is large, from the works of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven to the more abstruse compositions of Delius, Bax, and Moeran.