MUSIC FOR WINTER LISTENING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 873, 27 April 1956, Page 6

MUSIC FOR WINTER LISTENING

N Monday next the first of the winter programmes of serious music will start from the YC stations. Many of them will be of exceptional interest, as they include concerts from the 1955 Edinburgh Festival, a musical biography of Franz Liszt, and the first New Zealand broadcast of Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera The Turn of the Screw. Pride of place in these programmes goes to the recordings from the Edinburgh Festival. .The familiar setting, with its inauguration ‘service in St. Giles, its thousands of visitors moving between concert halls, cinemas and theatres, and its final Tattoo on the Castle Esplanade, is introduced by David Cleghorn Thomson, a native of Edinburgh. The first concert is by the pianist Geza Anda (1YC, April 30), and the second is by the Griller Quartet, who include in their programme a new quintet for clarinet and strings by the British composer William Wordsworth, in which Reginald Kell is the soloist. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the celebrated young baritone, is represented by a recital of Brahms lieder, which includes the "Four Serious Songs." Segovia gives a guitar recital of music originally for lute, as well as works by Bach and Spanish composers. A group of singers who may be new to New Zealand audiences, the Saitire Music Group, include a work specially commissioned for broadcasting. This is a Cantata for a Summer’s Day, which earned its young composer, Thea Musgrave, high praise from the critics. The last of these Festival programmes is by the Hungarian String Quartet, who play a Beethoven Quartet and Bartok’s last String Quartet. Liszt is a figure who usually excites strong feelings amongst listeners and musicians. His life, with its violent love entanglements, its flamboyant showmanship and its occasional monastic retreats, is a puzzling one, In England he is still

charged with being insincere both in his life and in his music. Listeners will have the opportunity in the new musical biography, A Worshipper at Noon (2YC, April 30), of deciding the question for themselves. The piano works to be heard-which include the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and part of his first Piano Concerto-are to be played by Louis Kentner, Teacher of Music, to be heard later, is from a BBC series on great teachers. It tells of the experiences of a pianist, Katharine Goodson, when she became the pupil of Leschetizky, the teacher of Paderewski. Warned by her friends that lessons at first might be a little difficult,.she was in some ways prepared for the master’s biting criticisms. But as her lessons proceed we see that criticism from Leschetizky was always directed towards the betterment of his

pupil, and he emerges as a monumental and lovable person. Katharine Goodson plays the musical illustrations and pianists will be interested in her observations on the Leschetizky method of relaxation from tip to toe. Gerald Moore needs little introduction. In a link programme, The Unashamed Accompanist, he starts by playing "Il Bacio" in a tub-thumping manner, and goes on to complain of the days when all eyes were on the singer, especially if she was beautiful, and none on her accompanist- Those unhappy days, however, have passsed, and Gerald Moore speaks for all accompanists, when

he shows how vital is the part they play. ‘The winter programmes of opera (May 27 onward) continue the Mozart festival with Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. In May 2YC will present the first New Zealand broadcast of Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw. Based on the short novel of Henry James, the story is about two young children who are haunted by. the presence of a former manservant and governess, both now dead. In some mysterious way a battle for the children’s souls is in progress. The evil forces which strive to possess them and which are fought by the new governess are deliberately left vague by James, as he wanted his readers to identify them from their own experience. The composer conducts the performance, which is by the English Opera Group. Anothér work by Britten, the St. Nicholas Cantata, which tells of legendary incidents in the life of St. Nicholas, will be broadcast from 4YC on Monday next. The YZ _ stations have not been neglected, for their programmes include a specially recorded series of programmes by the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra, and Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge. (Details of other programmes in the National Stations’ winter schedule will be found on pages 16, 17 and 20.)

LIGHT MUSIC EVERAL new light music programmes will be taking the air for the first time during the next three months. More information about these will appear in next week’s issue, together with details of new instalments of programmes which have already proved popular, such as William Austin’s "Won't You Come In?" and "Three’s Company," presenting Jean McPherson, Finlay Robb and John Hoskins.