Masterworks from France
Y heart sank when I was invited by a breezy American voice to "taste the gleanings of the Paris treasure house," and I thought that some kind of hoax was being perpetrated, and that under the title Masterworks from France there crouched old VOA. However, this voice was so good-humoured and rattled out French names with such a dazzling precision that I was disarmed. Finally, after a biographical sketch of the composer Marcel Stérn who, I learn, reduces all musical rhythm. to the pulse and the heartbeat, we had five waltzes for wind instruments and I enjoyed them enormously. The dances were sly, ingratiating and prodigiously witty; I wish Disney could have heard them. I suspect that they might have fired his imagination to some brilliant animal carnival. For, with a bassoon and a French horn beating it out in 3/4 time, all I could see were grave hippopotami and lumbering rhinoceroses making dignified circuits of some vast river flat. I chuckled throughout. "Masterworks" is a fairly large claim for the pieces which followed by Debussy, Ibert and Tournier arranged for harp ensemble, though they were charming and fresh. I shall look forward to the next series, and particularly to more of Marcel Stern.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 820, 15 April 1955, Page 10
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207Masterworks from France New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 820, 15 April 1955, Page 10
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