The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 10

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

(COLIN HORSLEY is paying us another visit, and enough of his recitals are being broadcast to give us a fair programme coverage without undue repetition. His first recital (YC link) was probably a good guide to what we can. expect in the others. In particular, A his encores should be held up as an example of what encores can be-works of art rather than mere appendages. As we know, Mr. Horsley is an advocate and exponent of Lennox Berkeley’s music, some of which finds its way into each programme; in this concert we heard one of the Concert Studies, and three interesting Mazurkas, written by way of homage to Chopin. Here we might attribute the rhythms to Chopin and the ideas to Mr. Berkeley-not such an unfair division as it might appear, since after all the rhythms are the driving and characteristic force of the Mazurka, and the notes themselves must derive largely from those rhythms. In performance, the combifation of stvles was unexceptionable, set off by the brilliant playing that we can expect of Colin Horsley.

, Such works by Arthur Honegger that We are able to hear are of variable quality, as evidenced by his very good quartet, and a patchy Fifth Symphony (1951), which is being heard as an-FBS transcription. It is surnamed."the three D’s" since each movement ends on that as a concession to tonality. For a polytonal work I found it clever but uninspired; composers used to put their musical eggs into the basket of the first movement: more recently the finale has been the receptacle: but in this symphony there seemed too few eggs to distribute at all. Contrasts there are in plenty-machine-made, facile contrasts -and a certain inventiveness: but Honegger’s gift of melody has deserted him for the moment, and his orchestral colours have mislaid thoir variety. Too much muted brass is as bad rs too much fat-the effect is a trifle bilious. I’m not sure, but I think I would put some good Stan Kenton on a higher :av-ical plane. I have no criticism of the performance, which was undeservedly well done under Charles Munch.