The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 781, 9 July 1954, Page 10

The Week's Music...

by

OWEN

JENSEN

HEN is a Junior Symphony Orchestra not a "junior" symphony? In fact, when does it become THE symphony orchestra? This was a question brought up by the Auckland Junior Symphony Orchestra’s broadcast from 1YC of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with Murray Musson as soloist. The intonation, precision and verve of the over--ture would have done credit to a much more seasoned body of players and the concerto, too, came off well, with Murray Musson showing himself as a soloist of no mean ability. After its six or seven years of training, producing playing like | this, the Junior Symphony should have just about paved the way for an Auckland City Symphony. Meanwhile, let’s hope the Junior Symphony with its conductor Dr. Charles Nalden will go on from triumph to triumph as one of the more significant forces in New Zealand music. When it was suggested that the oboe as an instrument did not mix too well with piano, I had not heard Leon Goossens and Jessie Hall play Malcolm Arnold’s Sonata for Oboe and Piano (a YC link broadcast). Both musicians made the most of what must have been exciting parts to play, and the general effect. was one of scintillating good humour. This Malcolm Arnold is a com-

poser to keep an eye on, and an ear, too. His Oboe Concerto, which Goossens Played with the National Orchestra, has inventiveness, adroit craftsmanship, and even when Arnold indulges himself in the English compossr’s favourite pastime of "folksiness,’ he manages to make his village green a place of character. Most depressing note of the week was sounded by the National Orchestra’s newly-appointed conductor, James Robertson, in an interview with Andrew Gold in a New Zealand Music Society programme, broadcast by the YCs, Asked about the programmes he had in mind, Mr. Robertson said he believed in giving people "pleasure, not pain," and would be sticking mostly to the "established masterpieces." Maybe he has heard something about the lack of adventure in some of our Rugby, or maybe he is playing safe until he gets to know us. Or perhaps he includes among his masterpieces music like that about which Arthur Jacobs spoke so convincingly in his talk on Stravinsky (or the hundred or more Haydn symphonies we haven’t yet heard). But not, please, too much music like the prolix and uninspired John Gardiner Symphony which Mr. Robertson mentioned, and which the National Orchestra played a season or so ago.