Lively Lunch-hour Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 720, 1 May 1953, Page 6

Lively Lunch-hour Music

: THE National Orchestra’s audiences . are not generally given to eating | during performances. They may be ex- | pected to abandon this | constraint | shortly, however, for the new. season’s |lunch-hour concerts. | The concerts will start at 12.15 p.m., galas end’ at 1.45 p.m., thus providing three-quarters of an hour of music in each of the two most common lunch» hours. Programmes will consist of lighter | and less demanding music, rather similar | in character to that heard at the Promenade Concerts. The first of this year’s lunch-hour concerts will be at Wellington on May 4. Speaking of the programmes, the National Orchestra’s guest conductor Warwick Braithwaite told The Listener that most of the items he had included were short-so that patrons might come and go at convenient times-and that there were no hard musical nuts to crack. "Where there is a symphony," he said, "it will be a lighter one. In the first programme I have included the delightful little Mozart Symphony, No. 29 in A, which takes only 17 minutes, and is a work well worth bringing to light." Mr. Braithwaite said also he was looking forward to hearing the leader of the orchestra, Vincent Aspey, in his solo performance of Saint-Saens’s Havanaise. "He is a very fine leader, and, I believe, an equally fine soloist. "Of course," continued Mr. Braithwaite, "no programme of th’s type would be complete without a Massenet suite. In this case it will be the Scénes Pitt0Oresques, a charming suite which I (continued on next page) .

deubt if Wellington people have heard before." Other items in the first programme are Elgar’s "Cockaigne’" overture, Smetana’s tone poem "Vitava," and Wagner’s "Mastersingers" overture. Asked if there were lunch-hour orchestral concerts in Britain, Mr. Braithwaite said he knew of none, The National Gallery concerts organised by Myra Hess were abandoned after the war. The concerts, however, were a very good idea, and it was to be hoped New Zealand would continue to support them. The programme for the first concert, outlined above, will also be heard at Christchurch on May 20, and at Auckland on June 8. Admission prices--1/6 for stalls and 2/6 for circle-are fully competitive with the price of the average lunch. ;