HOFFNUNG MUSIC FESTIVAL
Sir,- Words like Distortion, Misquotation and Misrepresentation should be used with due care and restraint in election year if they are not to become utterly debased and meaningless. Nevertheless, your contributor R.D.McE. leaves me no alternative but to take a leaf from the politician’s notebook (or a plank from his platform) and level these querulous and much abused accusations at his review of the Hoffnung Music Festival Concert. He says that in my programme notes I stated (not implied) that the Concert "exposed the pretensions of the symphony orchestra," I am surprised to hear it, and I am sure Mr. Hoffnung would be equally surprised. Exposure is an act that has come to be associated only with American vaudeville and investigating committees, if one may make such a fine distinction. I certainly had no intention of lending Mr Hoffnung’s satire to such a dubious practice, I think your contributor has been led astray by mishearing or misinterpreting my remark that Hoffnung was "gently de-bunking the whole mystique of symphony concerts." This, I think he will agree, is a rather different kettle of fish. Not that I blame R.D.McE. for his lapse. It is scarcely surprising that, amid the falling cadences of broken glass and the tuneful exuberances of the tuba, some of the finer points of meaning should be lost or misunderstood. Let me assure R.D.McE. that, like him, I look upon the Hoffnung as Satire, but not Satire With a Serious
Purpose.
PETER
HARCOURT
(Wellington).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 926, 10 May 1957, Page 11
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249HOFFNUNG MUSIC FESTIVAL New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 926, 10 May 1957, Page 11
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