Birthday of Schola Cantorum

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 814, 4 March 1955, Page 18

Birthday of Schola Cantorum

HEN the Schola_ Cantorum enters its 20th season on March 9 it will mark the occasion with a Wellington Town Hall recital of works "chosen from the things we’ve enjoyed most or have got most satisfaction from" in the past 19 years. That’s how the choir’s conductor, Stanley Oliver, put it when The Listener asked him to say a word about the occasion. Notable among these works are Flos Campi, by Vaughan Williams, a work without words and one of the most difficult things ever attempted by the choir, which they first performed in the Wellington Town Hall Concert Chamber in -August, 1937. Mr. Oliver has a rather special interest in Flos Campi, as he was conductor of the Montreal Choir which gave the first performance of this work in America, in 1930. Another work to be heard in the anniversary recital is Holst’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, which was performed twice in the first public recital by the choir in October, 1936-because, as the programme said, it was felt that it was written in an unusual and unfamiliar idiom. Both these works are on the first half of the anniversary programme, which will be broadcast from YC stations at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesday, March 9. On the second half, to be recorded and broadcast later, are three choruses from ‘the Bach Mass in B Minor, for which the choir is hiring from Australia three trumpets in D. Mr. Oliver said these are specially made for the playing of Bach because parts of his works are too high for the modern orchestral trumpet. The orchestra for the anniversary recital will consist of players from the National Orchestra. Mr. Oliver recalled that the performance of a work by Bach several years ago had begun the choir’s departure from its original policy of concentration on modern works. "The emphasis," he said, "has always been on modern or less heard older works. The perform-

ance of older works gave our programmes something of an historical interest." To illustrate this point, he said that the anniversary programme would open with a short unaccompanied English work from the 16th Century because in its polyphony it had the germ of the more extreme polytonality of the Vaughan Williams work-Flos Campi -which come immediately after it. When it was suggested that the Schola Cantorum gave too few recitals, Mr. Oliver said they had to choose between giving more performances and maintaining their standards. Speaking of the type of programme given by the choir, he said they had never made concessions to popular taste yet they had managed to increase their audience from 300 to a point where they were disappointed with fewer than 1200. The choir had also become increasingly well known overseas. Both the ABC and the BBC had asked for more recorded programmes, and the recital recently given at St. James’ Church, Lower Hutt, had been recorded in Australia on an LP disc.