The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 10

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

OMETHING for everyone seems to be the declared aim of the new National Sunday programme. As far as I was concerned, the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra was one of its highlights, reflecting the polished tones of the 18th Century with originality and effect. In particular the vivacious Telemann Viola Concerto took my fancy, with Winifred Stiles as soloist in a merry antiphony with the orchestra. Works like thisfrom a composer of several hundred con-certos-show why Telemann was preferred to Bach by their contemporaries, for the light and tuneful Italian method replaces completely the greater solidity of the German school, which for most people is represented by Bach. The familiar figure of Cara Hall is with us again in a series of piano recitals (2YC) of "period music" from various countries. Her playing of the lute dances arranged by Respighi, and the Scarlatti sonatas, were admirably clear, with a sure touch and not too much staccato for my conservative taste. The amiable French programme was perhaps not quite as successful, but the Gibbons and Farnaby pieces were a delight. Donald Munro’s pleasant baritone has been heard lately, not only with the National Orchestra in Ashley Heenan's Sea Songs, but with the Alex Lindsay String Quartet (YC link) in song cycles bythe more modern English composers.

Love Blows as the Wind Blows, by George Butterworth, was a sensitive performance of a difficult work, very reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’s earlier cycle On Wenlock Edge. (This may well account for the latter composer’s praise of it.) The Quartet supported Mr. Munro most tastefully, marring their playing only by some poor intonation in the final bars. Of at least equal standard was the second in this series, the Alan Bush cycle Farewell Earth’s Bliss, in which the composer has subdued somewhat his usual angular manner. This combination of voice and accompaniment is a particularly satisfying one, ‘beside which a mere piano accompaniment sounds insipid especially for modern songs; I suppose the paucity of works in this form is due to the comparable paucity of good string quartets-in this country, at any rate. At least we have the Francis Rosner Chamber Ensemble, who have been doing good work lately (NZBS) with some less frequently-heard music. The Schubert Octet in F suffered a little, through slight mishandling of the balance and a certain amount of poor wind tuning; byt the String Quintet in G of Dvorak, not iene open to such intrinsic faults, came through with some fine tone and a dashing final movement-in the energetic sense, that is. A lovely work, this: to resort to cliché, it should receive more of our attention.