The Week';s Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 914, 15 February 1957, Page 16

The Week';s Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

ta) 7 WEEK of chamber music this has been in the main, and a nice change it was, too. First there was the violinpiano combination of Maurice Clare, whom we already know, and Marta Zalan, the young Hungarian whom we will know now. Their full programme included a good deal of interest: for instance, the Schumann violin sonatas (YC links), another pair of works neglected as a rule, but here so resuscitated that one wonders that they are so seldom heard. The first (as Mr. Clare pointed out) has a family resemblance to the Piano Concerto, not only in themes but in its wayward and fanciful style. The second, a more serious affair, meanders at times as though the way were not clear, but for the most part is pleasant though turgid. The artists are musicianly musicians, and attacked their Schumann with a fervour I am sure he would have applauded, with excellent tonal range 'and balance, as equals rather than solo plus accompaniment; anything else | would indeed make nonsense of the | music. | ‘The Sonata in D of Weiner, heralded 'as of unusual interest, proved to be a | Frenchified work harking back to a late ) romantic type, with enough formal architecture and enough pretty turns of

| | phrase to hold the attention, if not to demand it. This was also given an intense performance, one which might have made an advertisement for the composer as well as the players; but I’m afraid that oblivion will creep up on the music as it has done, regardless of worth, with so many other conservative composers. Marta Zalan, alone this time, also essayed Beethoven’s E Major Sonata, Op. 109 (national link), which she played very carefully, almost weighing the merits of the individual notes; and the whole effect was a little cloying, however detailed a study had gone into its production. Ritchie Hanna and Maurice Till added their quota to the violin and piano lists (NZBS), notably with the Rumanian Folk Dances of Bartok, which were given with immense energy and gusto; the work calls for this, of course, but this doesn’t mean that it always gets such sympathetic treatment. Finally, the clarinettist George Hopkins, with William Davis (NZBS) played Brahms’s F Minor Sonata with all the grave delicacy one could wish for. In all, a serene and satisfying set of programmes, full of charms to soothe the savage critic. I hope the fine spell lasts.