Happy Birthday

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 18

Happy Birthday

S° it is ten years since the National Orchestra gave its first concert, For ourselves, more wrinkles, more cares. For the orchestra, miles of score have been traversed, millions of notes in every combination have been scraped, blown and hit, hundreds of critical reviews have been written, and quite as many letters to the press, praisitig, deploring: encouraging, lamenting. Yet the ten-year-old child flourishes; there is no reason to suppose it will not achieve full maturity in its next decade. Once an itinerant band, liable to sudden dispersal to the four quarters, the orchestra is now entirely corporate, and its standatd of playing, from understandably fitful beginnings, is secure at a uniformly high level. To mark the anniversary, Douglas Lilburn was commissioned to compose an overture, which he has called "A Birthday Offering." I found it a delight. Beautifully scored, exploring with casual virtuosity the whole range of ofchestral sound, Mr. Lilburn has written a wholly charming piéce d’occasion. I should like to hear it several times, since its brilliant effects succeed one another so rapidly that the ear cannot at one heating quite contain them; this ear, at least. The end, with a sly statement of the Happy Birthday theme from the celesta, was quite as entrancing as James Robertson promised. Bravo to Mr, Lilburn, therefore, to Mr. Robertson, and to the orchestra, whose place in our national life, though outwardly menaced by malcontents and would-be guardians of the national purse, is quite clearly, unshakably secure.