The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 870, 6 April 1956, Page 26

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

ARTOK is not everyone’s cup of tea, nor is there reason to think he should be; but his fans must have had an ecstatic week when there was an hour or so of his music. every night (YC stations, Radio Hungary) from concerts to commemorate the composer’s tenth post-humus anniversary last year. Some of our bést-known musicians introduced the programmes with well-chosen words, and the music that followed covered the whole gamut of Bartok’s output, from the great Violin Concerto to the tiny Duos for violins. New to me was the Dance Suite for Orchestra, which is based on Hungarian folk tunes, and breaks the law of repetitious utterance that most folk-inspired pieces have; in this case it is fresh and charming, more synthesised than sinning. Bartok in more Serious mood is the rule for most of the concerts: the third Piano Concerto, in which he becomes less percussive than is his pianistic wont, and the Violin Con¢érto I mentioned, were among the highlights: set off in another programme by the second String Quartet, beautifully co-ordinated by the Tatrai Quartet -another stranger to me, but an amiable one. And if you didn’t like itwell, there was always some other

station playifig something more traditional and innocuous. Geoffrey Tankard, examiner for the Royal Schools of Music, was heard here last year: how he has given a series of talks to young pianists (NZBS) virtually on how to pérform their set pieces so as to gain in his estimation, The talks are lucid, spited with pictorial illustration according to the ages of his young hearers, and exemplified at the piano, The whole idea is good; but I must take umbrage at the forcing of any special illustration on the minds of childrenafter all, it is just possible that they have thoughts of their own. The playing, on the other hand, was so pastelshaded that it allowed their pictorial sense a pretty free hand. The Schumann cycle, A Woman's Life and Love, has been recorded often enough, but is infrequently heard as a live performace. Oné such was by the contralto Muriel Gale (YC link) and Ormi Reid, and if one overlooked some of the Getman, the voice and its accompaniment were smooth and faithful. No teal fault glated for me to glare back at, but perhaps some lack of inspiration; the singing breathed as much of heavy work as of woman’s love: ahd it is a tribute to the singer’s artistry that the cycle was successful. —