Organ and Orchestra

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 24

Organ and Orchestra

N Saturday, July 28, the National Orchestra, conducted by Michael Bowles, will present a further concert in the Wellington subscription series. The programme will include the symphonic suite "Scheherazade" (Rimsky-Korsakov ); arias and duos from Mozart's opera, "The Marriage of Figaro," with Phyllis Mander, Sybil Phillipps and Stewart Harvey; and Concerto No. 2 in B Flat for Organ and Orchestra (Handel), in which the soloist is Charles Martin. Here

BESSIE

POLLARD

discusses the last-natmed work in outline.

ANDEL’S Organ Concertos were works of his mature period, therefore they enshrine all the finest qualities which distinguish his later music-its flexibility, its profound feeling and its formal elegance. Opus 4 (consisting of six Concertos, of which the 'B Flat is the second) appeared in 1738, when Handel was 53 years of age; Opus 7 (also comprising six works) was published in 1740, and a third set appeared posthumously. Generally speaking, each Concerto is cast in four movements, but the length and style of each movement varies from work to work. The first movement (a tempo ordinario e staccato) of the Concerto No. 2 in B Flat, consisting of 13 bars all in "tutti," is more in the nature of an introduction to the second movement. It is built on a stately main theme made up of dotted _quaver-semiquaver motifs (below) and moves in solid, chordal harmonies-

The last two bars, marked adagio, end on dominant harmony, and lead directly into the second movement (a bright allegro), consisting of about 133 bars in all. A feature of the movement is the antiphonal treatment of soloist and orchestra, a typical device employed in Concertos of this period. It begins with a bold orchestral "tutti" presenting the theme upon which the movement is based (below)-a true Handelian melody with its reiterated notes, and brilliant ascending scale runs. The organ takes it over at bar 27 (not as a note-for-note repetition, but as a variant) developing the four-semiquaver motif embodied in the orchestra's original scale passages-

The third movement (adagio-key, G Minor), comprising six bars only, is improvisational and recitative-like in style; here the orchestra supplies a simple background of modulating chords for the soloist’s more florid, decorative passagewriting. This movement links on to the Finale without break; it begins with ‘this melody-

The fourth movement (allegro ma non troppo) again features antiphonal treatment of soloist and orchestra. The form is binary; bars 1-44 modulate from tonic to dominant, and bars 45-88 from dominant back to tonic, while bars 89-100 (the end) form a abest. a to round off the movement. Here are the opening bars of the Finale- .