Programmes for the Provinces

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 21

Programmes for the Provinces

N years past an artist or ensemble going off to give a concert in a pfovincial city or country town might have felt it necessary to play down to the audience a little. If that need ever existed, the ‘time for it is long gone. Radio and’ the gramophone, taking music far afield, make it possible for everyone’ with a spark of enthusiasm to learn to know-and love the best. Thus, when the Orchestra appears on the platform at Hamilton (1XH, March 28), New Plymouth (2XP, March 30), Wanganui (2XA, March 31), and Palmerston North (2ZA, March 2), it will pre-. sent programmes that would be fine to listen to anywhere. Naturally, as the Orchestra can only visit these places once in a while, it must please the greatest number of people, and James Robertson cannot afford, therefore, to go too far off the beaten track. But for those who have a yen to sharpen. their listening on the not so familiar there is A North American Square Dance by Arthur Benjamin which I am sure will speak for itself and Delius’s lovely The Walk to the Paradise Garden (Hamilton and _ Palmerston North). The Walk to the Paradise Garden is an intermezzo from Delius’s opera A Village Romeo and Juliet. The two rustic lovers, Sali and Vrenchen, like all lovers in grand opera, have their difficulties; and like most of them can find only one solution. In the end, they die together. But at the end of the fifth scene there is still -hope. "I know another place .not

" very far from here," says Sali, "where | we'll be quite unknown. In the Para- | dise Garden we will dance the night | away ... Come! Let us go!" The "Walk" | is all contemplation and impassioned tenderness. "It is in itself,’ wrote Philip Heseltine, "an epitome of the drama." The symphony in the first two of these | programmes is Mozart's "Jupiter. Pe The | origin of this nickname is shrouded in mystery, but no one will deny its aptness as a description of this great music. There are Jovian thunderbolts in the. opening triplets, and in the dynamic | rhythm of the first movement. There is_ | classic grandeur in the slow but the miracle is in the last movement. Mozart brings in theme after theme and_ then puts them altogether in a coda for as thrilling a finale as you'll hear in any symphony. Listeners on the country tour will have the pleasure, too, of meeting and hearing | again Cara Hall, who will play Beethoven’s G Major Piano Concerto, and at Wanganui, Mozart’s D Minor Concerto (Ken Smith will play the Haydn Trumpet Concerto at Palmerston North). The Beethoven No. 4 in G Major contains some of his very firfest music. It’s far more-and far less-than just a show piece for piano. Orchestra and soloist converse on equal terms. Said Schumann_ about this concerto: "I received a pleasure from it such as I have never enjoyed, and I sat in my place without moving a muscle or even breathing-afraid of making the least noise!"

Owen

Jensen