Festival Proms at Dunedin

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 809, 28 January 1955, Page 19

Festival Proms at Dunedin

"| HE: National Orchestra, with James Robertson»conducting, is back on the platform again for its 1955 Prom season. This week the Orchestra belongs to Dunedin for the summer festival of musi¢, art, sport, and straight-out entertainment. On paper the Prom programmes seem to offer as pleasantly exciting music as we have yet had from the Orchestra at this time of the year. In fact, they fulfil the old recommendation, as good as any for a post-holiday musical jaunt-some-thing old, something new, something. borrowed, something blue. Picking the eyes out of this week’s broadcasts from Dunedin there are, for instance, the Haydn Trumpet Concerto (4YC, February 4), which soloist Ken Smith has pretty well made his own in these parts, "Pineapple Poll" for something new and something borrowed, being Charles Mackerras’s arrangement of Sullivan tunes for a ballet, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (4YC, February 5): Among the major works to be broadcast by the Orchestra this week will be two old acquaintances-Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No, 2 in C Minor, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor. They will undoubtedly receive a warm welcome, despite their ubiquity; or, maybe, because of it. The popularity of these two compositions shows no signs of diminishing. Yet, apart from certain almost superficial aspects, their appeal is very different. What is the secret of their popularity?

There's more to it than "fate knocking at the door" or those portentous eight chords which are the soloist’s opening gambit in the Rachmaninoff. To those still making friends with the music, the liberal helpings of emotion that each composer gives us, the rich tunes in Rachmaninoff, his lyricism, and the drama of Beethoven, will all be enough to renew affection. Those, however, about to write off the familiarity of the music may wish "to

strike deeper. They will discover that the vitality of these two widely differing works comes from below the surface. The tunes, the themes, the ideas or whatever you. like to call them may continue to catch the ear, and it is true enough that when it comes to popularity in music, a shaft in the heart is worth two in the head. But what keeps both these works near the top of the poll is the superb craftsmanship with which the ideas are put together, the consummate logic with which the musical argument is developed. Feeling this, the music is re-created anew. Even if you don’t like the line of expression of either one or other of these composers, one cannot fail to be moved by the art that lies behind the’ presentation.

Owen

Jensen