OF CHOIRS, AND PLACES WHERE THEY SING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 734, 7 August 1953, Page 18

OF CHOIRS, AND PLACES WHERE THEY SING

"HE opening of Britain’s Royal Festival Hall two years ago was greeted by some with cries of pleasure, by others. with howls of rage. The loudest howl came from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s irascible conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham. That peevish knight thought the architecture ill-conceived, the acoustics awful. He would never ,conduct there. Yet, according to Stanley Oliver, conductor of. Wellington’s Schola Cantorum, the Royal Philharmonic gave a "brilliant" concert there under Sir Thomas’s baton in October last year. This interesting sidelight on the Royal Festival Hall is given by Mr. Oliver in the first of three illustrated talks to be heard during the next few months from all YC and YZ stations. On a recent visit to Britain Mr. Oliver viewed the Festival Hall in company with one of the building’s architects, and he describes in considerable detail the extraordinary precautions taken to ensure perfect tone quality, definition. and balance. During the "tuning" of the hall some of the wall panels were even stripped of their varnish and recovered with a finish of different consistency. Mr, Oliver's other two talks deal with the Three Choirs Festival held last year at Hereford, and with King’s College, Cambridge, and its music. At the festival Mr. Oliver met the composer John Gardnér, whose Cantiones Sacrae was. performed there. He Teports that the composer spoke in "glowing terms" of a performance by New: Zealand’s National Orchestra of his first symphony, which he was able to hear privately on a tape-recording in the possession of the BBC. At Cambridge, the conductor was able to hear the famous, Chapel Choir, as well as the Cambridge Madrigal Society, in their home environments. He describes the experience with the kéen perception of a music lover. The three talks, which include appropriate musical iilustrations, will be heard first from 2YC. The first, entitled The Royal Festival Hall, will be broadcast at 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, August 13.