The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 805, 24 December 1954, Page 13

The Week's Music...

by

OWEN

JENSEN

— At Llangollen in Wales they have a festival, nothing like Edinburgh, nothing like Salzburg, but a music meeting whose significance may in the long run be even greater-the International Festival of Folksong. You may have heard the recording of songs from the 1953 Festival which has been going the rounds. If you haven’t, keep a look out for it. You'll enjoy it. Belgrade, Innsbruck, Italy, 50 voices from a French University (with a New Zealander among them, incidentally), Spain, Switzerland, England and U.S.A.-some of the best choral singing you are likely to hear any time, fresh, vivid and friendly. In fact, the commentator summed up the spirit of the occasion by remembering that the valley of the Dee which shelters Llangollen was _ called by Wordsworth, "the vale of friendship." Nevertheless, after all the singing and the hands-across-the-sea business, I couldn’t help thinking of the harassed Festival Secretary, harassed as he must surely have been, straightening out the tangles, wrangles and wangles of more than 1200 competitors. from 22 countries. Well, you know what musicians are. : Three of the most attractive broadcasts this week were of contemporary music, but you mightn’t know it was contemporary without being told, for there was nothing of astringency, sourness Or even dissonance, in the popular sense, about it. Two of the works were = a

frankly and warmly romantic. The third composer seemed to be looking back to the dispassionate asceticism of the 16th Century or earlier. The 16th Century echoes came from settings of Psalms» 70 and 86 by the Swiss composer Henri Sutermeister (born 1910). They were beautifully sung by Gerald Christeller with organ accompaniment of John Randal (2YC). In the same programme we heard the first performance of Douglas Lilburn’s newest work, Six Duos for Two Violins. The Duos immediately recal] Bartok for the reason that the Hungarian composer wrote 44 for the same combination. But > there any resemblance ends. Douglas Lilburn’s Duos are of a different texture altogether; but they are no mere. exercise in two-part counterpoint. They are exciting, making the most of the resources of the. two instruments without any fancy effects and, in no way derivative, nevertheless romantic in temperament. They were convincingly played by Ruth Pearl and Jean McCartney (2YC). Rapsodia Portuguesa for piano and orchestra, by the Spanish composer Escriche Ernesto Halffter (born 1905) was the other romantically inclined piece. Rhythmically very much alive, it gave the National Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Charles Nalden, plenty to do (YC link). But it asked much more of the soloist. David Galbraith’s exposition of the solo part was a brilliant bit of work, © .