The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 915, 22 February 1957, Page 10

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

AGAIN the annual Prom season is under way; again we have a guest conductor to colour our fare with the stamp of his own personality; as in every year there is a nice juxtaposition of the serious and the frivolous; and as in every year, we are hearing a comprehensive selection of excerpts. I have nothing against excerpts personally, except that they are usually culled from the musically less worthy portions of larger works, but there is always an implied slight on the audience-perhaps they will be unable to appreciate the rest of the work. Surely there are plenty of short pieces available for the latter part of the programmes, when the audience is fidgety and needs variety above all, without mincing up gobbets of suites. For the Tchaikoyski Serenade in C, for instance, to be represented only by the Waltz, is perhaps unfair to the rest of the piece; and even this snippet was somewhat rag@edly cut. We must be fair, though, and mention some of the very good music that has come out of the series so far (YC links). Francis Rosner gave an admirably virile reading of Haydn’s C Major Violin Concerto, with deft surety of. touch and only rare lapses of intona-

tion; and the temptation to make the slow section a smooth nonentity was resisted, to its great advantage. I was a little disappointed to hear the Schubert Fifth Symphony again, though the playing had improved over last year’s effort: but there are other suitable symphonies without such obvious repetition. One evening was devoted to the celebration of Elgar’s birth centenary. A pompotis (but circumstantial) opening led to the Sea Pictures, with Mary Pratt singing at her most suave; though rather overweighted at times by her accompaniment, she contrived deep solemnity and gentle whimsy with apparent ease. I liked it. The Enigma Variations were individually well played; it was difficult to judge the work as a whole; because there were lengthy pauses between the movements, while the speeds were a trifle variable even for Elgar; yet for the most part the music was given a restrained and scholarly rendering. Professor John Bishop, who is conducting on this tour, has a flexible style which perhaps baffled the Orchestra a little at first, but they have rallied and are now playing with confident precision, I think we can expect some first-rate concerts as the conducted tour proceeds,