Top of the Ladder

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 10

Top of the Ladder

ZB SUNDAY SHOWCASE. which sometimes plummets like a_ stone, last Sunday soared to its highest level for some time with the recorded rehearsals of Bruno Walter conducting Mozart’s The Ling Symphony. It was an entirely fascinating hour, and the personality of Bruno Walter came through to us with a richness and a fidelity impossible to capture by any other means. For here was the man, the artist. One saw a lifetime of thought and skill brought to bear on this lovely work, a consummate musical intelligence attuned to judge the slightest variations (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) of pitch, the smallest rhythmic violation. The old man was both endearing and splendid. He called his orchestra "my friends" and "my dears"; "Sing!" he Wotild shotit to the secon violins; "Sing!" to the oboes, and this duty to sing seemed primary in his conception of the work, And when the completed movements were heard, his points had been well taken. The orchestra sourided crisp and rich, and irideed there was plenty of song. I can think of no better way of learning &n orchestral work, to say rothing of how crucial a part the conductor plays in the finished performance, Might bile sliggest that the pleasant deceit practised on Bruno Walter might be repeated by our. technicians with age Robertson? The results could well be iost edifying.