CONCERTOS AT HOME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 632, 10 August 1951, Page 10

CONCERTOS AT HOME

HE concert given by Yehudi Menuhin and the National Orchestra was one of the very finest in this country’s history. Perhaps, in its class of music, it was the very. finest. Great solo playing of two great concertos in one evening, admirable support, a packed house, immense enthusiasm-everything was there. And for the listener, perfect reception. Listening at home by the fire, I thought over the two sets of advant-

ages attendant on going to such ‘a concert and staying at home. The fullest satisfaction, of course, comes from being in the hall, provided one is reasonably well accommodated. At home, however, there~ is more physical comfort, and such comfort is a consideration in the enjoyment of music. One has one’s own chair and one’s own fire, one’s own personal environment. So far as is humanly pos-

sible, all distraction can be excluded, One can walk about, smoke, and at halftime go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea, Perhaps one day New Zealand music and drama will reach the refreshment level of service. The concert hall is a place of assembly. At one’s home there is slippered ease. (True, accidents will happen, The telephone may ring. Visitors may drop in. If they are music lovers one whispers the situation and moves chairs for them softly. If they are not-and some of the nicest people, despite what Shakespeare says, don’t care for music -one says brightly: "Listening? Just filling in time! We'll turn it off. How’s the family?") One feels one is not with the audience and yet with it. While the music is being played the listener gets the impression that he is the sole beneficiary; then the loud, prolonged applause comes in, and he shares in a rare experience, It struck me more than ever that night that broadcast music comes with a canalised and impersonal force that differentiates it from music heard by an audience. Nothing counts but the strict content of the music. The human element is removed from the presentation. I suggest that for some listeners the disembodiment makes concentration easier. And in the reception, analysis: and absorption of such beauty, the fire is a most friendly collaborator. In its glow is the stuff of such dreams as make great music, Qn such occasions the miracle and beon of radio are again brought home. I first heard the Beethoven Concerto forty years ago played in New Zealand by a world-famous violinist with a local orchestra, Only the audience, of perhaps fifteen hundred, could listen, Now we had another world artist with a much larger and better orchestra, a national body, and the whole community could listen, And in the interval of the concert, the enterprise of the Broadcasting Service gave listeners a novel item of exceptional interest, a recorded interview with Yehudi Menuhin and _ his sister Hephzibah. Thus the two categories of entertainment were offered on

the same programme: music (in the instrumental form) and the speaking voice. Like those who had the better fortune to go to the concert (and after all, only some can get in), listeners should have gone to bed breathing a prayer of grati-

tude.

A.

M.