UNPERFORMED OVERTURE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 5

UNPERFORMED OVERTURE

Sir--A prize-winning work in the Auckland Music Council’s composition competition for 1950 :remains .unperformed. Mr. Goossens, the ‘judge, described the work in the awarding of the prize as follows (Listener, June 6, 1950): "A 14-minute arrangement for orchestra and piano entitled Mardi Gras is a colourful piece of music, with much contemporary harmonic expression, and clarity of expression, and in parts rather hectic." Early in June it was announced that .the conductor of. the National Orchestra would not be playing the work. Then Stanley Oliver made. this statement (Evening: Post); "I feel that. it should be known that Mr. Goossens expressed no great enthusiasm for any of the compositions submitted, and had misgivings about the performance effectiveness of any of them. The National Orchestra put the winning work in. rehearsal, and Mr. Bowles’s decision that it was unsuitable was therefore only a practical confirmation of Mr. Goossens’s misgiving." May I ask in what way this work is lacking in "performance effectiveness?" Is it too hard for an orchestra? Is the work so badly written that it is tech--nically unplayable? I have met Mr. Carr; he is a lively young man, of 20, keen On Stravinsky, and I can easily imagine him writing, as young composers will, a cheerful, rowdy overture, of irrepressible high spirits. Mr. Bowles has every right, in my opinion, to re-

fuse to play a work with which he is not in sympathy. But what happens now? Would it have mattered so much had the Auckland Town Hall been filled with a noisy hullabaloo for five minutes? I think that the music, and the young man, should have been given a chance; and if Mr. Bowles, understandably enough, did not want to play it, then could not another conductor, say, Mr. Owen Jensen, in the composer’s absence, have been asked to "give it a go"? I am a little dasturbed by the implication of the NZBS’s attitude-if it has one. Are all musical matters in this country to be referred to the conductor of the NZBS orchestra, and is his word final? If so, then in my opinion, the conductor is being asked to assume more responsibility than aeet be_ placed on any one man.

FREDERICK PAGE

(Wellington).

(The official comment on this letter is as follows: "In the opinion of Mr. M. A. Bowles, who, as conductor and musical director of the National Orchestra, is responsible for the quality of the music to be included in its programmes, a tformance of the overture could not have such as to sustain the musical prestige of the asion-the Auckland Music Festival-or of the National Orchestra. Second, the loan of the parts, which are the property of the Broadcasting Service, was offered on March 21. to the Auckland Music Council, which has rights in the score, if it should be desired to ‘have the overture performed by an Auckland orchestra, The offer was not taken up. Third, Mr. Bowles’s responsibility is that defined above and certainly does not extend to ‘all musical matters in this country.’ "-+Ed.)