The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 815, 11 March 1955, Page 10

The Week's Music...

. by

SEBASTIAN

HE Proms in Auckland offered similar programmes to those given in our southern outlets (cultural outlets, that is), and more local artists and guest conductors, Dr. Charles Nalden and Georg Tintner proving worthy maestros. New to me was Halffter’s Rapsodia Portugesa, in which David Galbraith was the solo pianist. He certainly had more to do than anyone else, and what is more, did it very well. Maurice Till’s playing of the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody seems to be slowing down a little and improving with repetition, while the Sorcerer’s Apprentice has lost none of his magic. A particularly lovely church service caught my attention a short while agoa BBC ttranscription of a choral Evensong at Ely Cathedral (YC link). Some of the best English church music was used, and the multiplicity of anthems served to add rather than detract from the purpose of the service, unlike so many local festal services. There has been a large amount of advance publicity for the series of recitals by Hilde Cohn (2YC) of various studies by the "schools" of studymongers, from Czerny to Liszt. Certainly she selected some of the most attractive plants in this much-maligned field: maligned, I feel, more because of childish associations among pianists rather than for any lack of artistry in the pieces themselves. Actually it always

surprises me that the greater studymerchants have bothered to put so much musical value into what is always regarded as a "grind," or something which must be unpleasant so as to be good for you, like cod liver oil. In any event, Hilde Cohn did nothing to make them any more unpleasant. Her playing of Czerny and his pupil Cramer aroused both my envy and my admiration, and I hardly recognised two old war horses at which I once struggled myself, In these and the studies of Heller and Moscheles I thought there was too much sentiment for the content (or for mine), but naturally this could not apply to the Chopin and Liszt studies which are concert pieces in their own right, besides embodying enough sentiment for the most rampant romanticist. While I’m dealing largely with pianists, I ought to mention a very pretty Chopin recital by Patricia Gibson (3YC) and another by Jennifer Barnard of works by Mozart and Haydn; I think that for the young pianist with a sure touch and balanced dynamic’ sense nothing can be better for a studio recital than these two composers, and the selection and performance in this case were both neat. There is no doubt that our studio artists are maintaining a good standard, so that locally we are well catered for, even without the girdle round the earth provided by the linked programmes-a girdle which fits a little snugly at times.