The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 802, 3 December 1954, Page 10

The Week's Music...

by

OWEN

JENSEN

BACH on a Sunday afternoon suits me fine, especially if it’s from the "Forty-Eight." Of course, it depends on the Sunday and how you are using it. This was a February afternoon in November with nothing to do but let the music frame as beautiful a New Zealand landscape as you could find, and no other sound but an occasional distant car and the almost inaudible murmur of a group of school boys being read to, lazing under the trees, sleeping or just lazing. In this contentment the imagination and ear, curiously, become more alive. Bach, the Prelude No. 24 in B Minor, fitted the occasion, particularly when it was so satisfyingly played by Stanley Jackson from 1XH. Mary Pratt and Maurice ‘Till have been giving us some very pleasant recitals but I rather felt Mr. Till let us down a bit in the programme of November 16 (YC link). It was surely an anachronism to include in a recital of such distinction the Liszt piano arrangement of Schubert’s "Hark, Hark, the Lark," and Gieseking’s superficially florid adaptation of the Richard Strauss "Serenade." This is the sort of thing for a more lightsome occasion, when no singer of Mary Pratt’s calibre is about, or no singer at all, There’s a time and place for everything. Song arrange-

ments for the piano come off second best when the genuine article is at hand, Summer must have arrived, for the National Orchestra is hibernating. But, confined to its summer studio quarters, the Orchestra is no less lively. In fact, sometimes, its broadcasting den makes the music a little too lively. This was an advantage, however, for the Rosenkavalier Waltzes (YC link) which came off brilliantly. The studio added richness, too, to the strings in the excerpts from Schubert’s Rosamunde music and brightness to Dora Drake’s Mozart arias, Was it accident or design that John Gray in his excellent monthly New Records (YC link) began with George Malcolm’s harpsichord playing of Scarlatti and finished with, of all things, a mandolin concerto by one Giovanni Hoffmann? George Malcolm’s fiery harpsichord playing gave the impression that he might have had a grudge against Scarlatti. As for the mandolin, all I can say is that it sounded remarkably like a harpsichord. Maybe I should draw Mr. Gray’s attention to that littleknown work by Gustaf Semolina for two toasting forks and an eggbeater, It is a concerto molto grosso half Handel and half Bach,