The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 804, 17 December 1954, Page 10

The Week's Music...

by

OWEN

JENSEN

HE National Orchestra, like the rest of us, must be feeling the approach of the end of the year. Yet there seems no slackening in the exuberance of its playing. The programme of Russian music conducted by Iwan Federoff was quite one out of the® box with some specially exciting playing in the Kabalevsky Symphony and some _ notable trumpeting in the last movement. For once we may describe this performance as "good as a recording," not just because of the playing but for the work of the broadcast technicians, which was first-rate. The Orchestra, however, if it still finds it possible to lift a lissome bow and blow with vigour may be, and understandingly so, a little jaded in the matter of thinking and feeling. The Sibelius Symphony No. 5.in E Flat conducted by James Robertson (YC link) was more notable for strength than subtlety, and was hardly the polished performance they gave us of this work earlier in the season, But then Sibelius’s moodiness comes a bit too near midsummer, to which it is by no means attuned. Something more summery was given us by Anita Ritchie, Vera Martin and Winston Sharp with pianist M. Dixon in Old Songs in New Guise (3YC). Such

familiar morsels as "Sing We Enchanted" and "Scots Wae Hae" (is that the way you spell it?) came off in their trio arrangements by Vernon Griffiths and John Ritchie with delightful frankness. Listening to Mary Pratt and Maurice Till (YC link) in the final broadcast of their series together, when Miss Pratt sang contemporary British songs to make the very best of their pastel romanticism, one remembers again how easy it is to forget the pianist when the singing is so good. Maurice Till’s accompanying was admirable, always clear and fluent and sensitive to the demands of the singing. His Chopin "Berceuse" was beautifully played, too. The best contemporary music of the week was Walter Piston’s Sonata for Flute and Piano played by James Hopkinson and David Galbraith (YC link). This music had something to it. It seemed well wedded to the flute, and the piano, too; or at least the expert playing made it sound so. The highlight of cheerful vulgarity, vulgarity of the kind that goes with a holiday binge, was. "Blackpool by the Sea," sound-picture of the famous holiday resort (2YA). Blackpool sounds as though it might be a bit of all rightif there weren't so many people about the place,