The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 872, 20 April 1956, Page 20

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

ASTER has passed, and with it the atmosphere of unearned holiday and feasting that usually accompanies it. No musical crimes of any note were reported, the prescription apparently being the Easter mixture as before. Muriel Gale, the English contralto I mentioned a few weeks ago, sang a Short cantata by Bach (National link) which I didn’t know previously, one of the several for solo voice, accompanied in this case, with organ played by Peter Averi. Not exactly a festal cantata like Jauchzet Gott (well known through Schwarzkopf’s recording), this one, Rejoice Ye Souls, was of the happy though quiet variety, calling for purity of tone rather than any flashing brilliance. Miss Gale brought artistry to bear upon it, and the difficult music bloomed. I think the recording must have been made without the good offices of St. Cecilia, because the organ was often too soft, at times lost completely behind the vocal melismata. This state of affairs improved in the lovely "Be Thou With Me," and in the following old Easter carols, culled from collections whose composers will never be known. A concert by the Schola Cantorum (NZBS) which I must have missed

earlier, seemed altogether fitted for the season, though I don’t think it was designed for the purpose. Especially interesting was the Cantata of Peace by Darius Milhaud, a work of Biblical text and lofty texture, not at all like the composer’s usual essays in the field of jocular dissonance. I can’t help feeling that it must do modernistic composers a lot of good to write religious choral music now and then, even if only to realise the limitations of their own styles. This remark can hardly apply to Kodaly’s sMort episode, "Jesus and the Traders," since he ventures into this sphere comparatively often, Britten’s "Marsh Flowers" and Schutz’s setting of the 74th Psalm have been sung by the Scholae before, but were well worth the further airing; Stanley Oliver conducted with the expected finesse. To conclude a pre-eminently vocal week. I heard the soprano Merle Gamble (NZBS) singing songs by the New Zealand composer David Farquhar. I didn’t fall for them immediately, not because of any conservative bias, but for the unvocal line and the rather strident treatment’ of more gentle lyrics. The voice tended to overweight an interesting accompaniment, too, a fault quite common in local recordings. I hope to hear these songs in more auspicious conditions later on-preferably much later on.