The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 917, 8 March 1957, Page 15

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

ITH the present boom in gramophone records, the stendard repertoire has not only been exhausted, but you may have a choice of four or five versions of a given piece. This being so, both the record companies and, perforce, the local musicians are virtually forced to cast about for the less known, the esoteric, and inevitably the good second-rate. They dig into musty medieval manuscripts, they dip into the future, plucking the still-unripe fruits of the contemporary composers’ wilder imaginations, and crow with triumph as they emerge with a hitherto-unheard work. As a result of these labours, we are richer by a few neglected masterpieces, and poorer by the addition of many reams of very plain hack-work, of little real value except to the rabid musicologist. As an illustration of this, we heard (NZBS) a programme titled "Sunday Music for Early Instruments," in which a motet by Francois Couperin in honour of St. Suzanna was performed. Here a body of good research produced comparatively small music. In spite of the announcer’s build-up, the motet was hardly transcendental or inspiring. To dissect a little, let me say that the music, of determined cheeriness, lacked in harmonic interest: that the voices and

solo instruments were kept separate throughout: that the recitative was very flat compared with, say, Bach or Handel: and that the main chorus, heard three times, was each time less enthralling. This last I regard as damning, because unfamiliar music should improve with acquaintance; but I am now sufficiently acquainted with this particular movement, As to the performance, it was not altogether satisfactory. In part this was due to the recorders being overweighted by the organ tone; and while I admire Robin Gordon’s tenor voice, to cal] it a ‘counter-tenor and push it to impossible altitudes was a noble but misguided effort, since the effect was that of a straining tenor. Sybil Phillipps’s pure tone was as pleasing as ever, and Donald Munro’s baritone balanced the other parts well except when he had to sing below his effective register. Perhaps a bass voice would have been indicated. In all, we must give credit to the Castle family for preparing and playing this fragment of the unusual, but remain disappointed at its negative qualities. Old music seems to be performed nowadays merely because it is old, and I hardly think that a certain quaintness can justify lack of intrinsic worth, however antiquated a work may be,