The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 893, 14 September 1956, Page 24

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

AP HE harpsichord, like many another : old ‘instrument, is not to everyone’s | taste. On one hand it lacks some of the | shades of meaning of the piano, and /Some of its thunder on the other. For al] that, in the right hands it is a beautiful and sensitive thing, combining features of harp and organ-the plucked sound and action of the former, the registration changes and manuals of the latter, while contriving to look vaguely like a piano, Not that it is a hybridthe piano is really more of one; but these features make it an instrument unlike any other, and the quantity of music written for it in the 17th and 18th centuries makes is indispensable for Baroque enthusiasts, of whom there must be a number even in this country. Some weeks ago I wrote that Rosalyn Tureck’s piano playing of the Goldberg Variations was a modern answer to the challenge of the harpsichord; and so it was. But the older instrument has its moments of supremacy, one of which was the first concert that included the new Goff harpsichord of the NZBS, when Dr. Thornton Lofthouse played Bach’s F Minor Concerto with the National Orchestra (YC link). I have | nothing but praise for the instrument,

with a clear ringing tone both in the loud and soft, and a diction for any piano to énvy: the tonal changes were magical in effect, and the unpleasant twanging, of some harpsichords was entirely absent. Perfect the playing certainly was not: apart from a few flurryings and a rather turgid final movement, the soloist and orchestra often lost contact. Yet this wa3 a first, and in some ways, experimental performance, and we should hear great things of this new possession once it and we aré acclimatised. This programme also included the somewhat heavy Faust Overture of Wagner, and Elgar’s first Wand of Youth Suite at the other end of the musical portentousness scale, both well played. Even better. both in performance and ease of. listening was’ Holst’s Somerset Rhapsody, which is at once ingratiating in its use of folk melody. The use of some of the same tunes as Vaughan Williams has set made one realise the latter’s weighty tread where Holst is more sprightly, his mistiness where this was sweet and clear-a contrast much to Holst’s advantage. Here the woodwind were at, their best-and the best is certainly the least that will do for this work.