The Week's Music... by OWEN JENSEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 788, 27 August 1954, Page 10

The Week's Music... by OWEN JENSEN

‘THE highlight of the week was undoubtedly the National Orchestra’s first New Zealand performance of William Walton’s Symphony (YC link). This must have been one of those occasions mentioned by Warwick Braithwaite in his broadcast talk last week when he finds his players rising right above themselves. They made the symphony the virtuoso piece it is, but seemed to be alive all the time to the subtleties of the music. In fact, detail came through with remarkable fidelity, which is a credit mark to the technicians as well as to the Orchestra. As a prelude to the National Orchestra programme the YC link gave us the Serenade Sonata for Viola and Piano by Richard Walthew, played by Ronald Moon and Gwen McLeod. This, the second of four broadcasts to be given by these artists, was a notable bit of ensemble work. In fact, they made Walthew’s tepid romanticism sound much more exciting music than one suspects it is. But you don’t have to stick to the YC link or even the main stations to come across musical adventures and fine playing. Filtering through from New Plymouth on 2XP came an uncommonly interesting broadcast by John and Doris Veale in the shape of a clarinet and piano sonata by Hindemith. Canterbury University College Music Department’s John Ireland Festival re spired the 75th birthday broadcasts

the composer’s music, affording a welcome opportunity for a reassessment of his place among 20th Century musicians. After listening to Ernest Jenner playing the Piano Concerto with the National Orchestra, Glynn Adams and Maurice Till the Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, and Winston Sharp singing some of Ireland’s songs with Dr. Vernon Griffiths as pianist, it can be said that John Ireland has been most fortunate in his exemplars. The music, it seems to me, dates. Its spirit might be summed up in the title of one of the song cycles, "The Land of Lost Content," a gentle post-Elgarian lyricism written mostly when it was still fashionable to flirt with a Debussy-like impressionism and possible to be. boldly optimistic in such sentiments as John Addington Symonds’s "These Things Shalj] Be." I hardly think John Ireland will ever be remembered as one of "the greatest geniuses in English music" as his friend John Longmire described him in a 75th birthday talk, but at least he has given delight to many singers and pianists. Stanley Oliver's talk on "The Story of the Glee" (2YC) revived memories of an almost forgotten music. Admirably set out, Mr. Oliver’s story was, as well, a peg on which to hang some excellent singing Pe the Wellington Baroque