AUCKLAND'S 1957 FESTIVAL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 927, 17 May 1957, Page 9

AUCKLAND'S 1957 FESTIVAL

WEALTH of entertainment sufficient to tax the endurance of the most _ avid concert-goer, has been organised for this year’s Auckland Festival. The programme is primarily a musical one and the music varies from classical opera to Mexican folk songs. There are also Art Gallery and Library displays and tours of parks and gardens, but the visual arts (with the exception of films) do not make a strong bid for attention. A few famous names grace the bill-board and these should have popular appeal. The NZBS has arranged for the broadcasting of many Festival concerts details of which will be found in the programmes listed in The Listener’s next two issues. A warm welcome awaits Jascha Spivakovsky, the veteran Russian-born pianist, who last visited New Zealand in 1955. He is to give two solo concerts at the Festival and will also appear with the National Orchestra. Spivakovsky leads a very active musical life. Since 1948 he has made five ¢oncert tours embracing Europe and-North America; he has given many recitals for the BBC and has also appeared on television. For the past 20 years ‘he has lived in Australia where he met his wife. He is on the staff of the Melbourne University Conservatorium, Jascha Spivakovsky will be the soloist in the National Orchestra’s concert on Thursday, June 6 (all YC stations). The programme is a notable one, observing as it does the tenth anniversary of the Orchestra’s. Auckland debut, and to mark the occasion it will play the controversial work of the Wellington composer Douglas Lilburn, A _ Birthday Offering. The Orchestra will also give the first New Zealand performance of the complete Petrouchka ballet _suite by Stravinsky. The concerto on this programme is Beethoven’s, in G, No. 4, Op. 58. On Saturday, June 8, the YC stations will broadcast the Orchestra’s second concert, at which the soloist will be Richard Lewis. One of Britain’s leading tenors, he will sing the Benjamin Britten composition Les Illuminations. Mr Lewis is under contract to the NZBS during his New Zealand tour. Members of the National Orchestra will also be ‘theard in the operas to be

performed by the New Zealand Opera Company. The Impresario by Mozart and The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti comprise the one programme and opera enthusiasts will have the opportunity of comparing this form of music in its classical and modern forms. The Mozart is a little comedy first performed in 1786. Joan Cochrane and Judith Ann Edwards play the rival prima donnas and Terence Finnegan the Impresario who seeks to keep the. peace between them. The Menotti opera, on the other hand is an eerie work in which the composer makes much of musical suggestion and symbolism. The soloists are Jill Evans, John Norton, Bertha Rawlinson, Donald Munro and Alice Graham. The whole programme is to be broadcast by the YC stations on Tuesday, June 4. Much interest has been aroused in the visit of the Singing Boys. of Mexico. Their concerts at the Festival will not have an entirely Latin flavour, as the choir’s repertoire ranges from Arcadelt and Brahms to Home on the Range. But the Mexican songs will bring a new experience to concertgoers. Aged 8 to 14 the boys, under the direction of Rogelio Zarzoza y Alarcon, have toured Europe and the Americas and their singing ranks with that of the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Well remembered from earlier Festivals in Auckland and known to radio listeners for their work with the New Zealand Music Society in London, Andrew Gold (tenor) and his. wife, Pamela Woolmore (soprano), will give two recitals at this year’s Festival. Mr and Mrs Gold, who have just returned from overseas, will record six programmes especially for the NZBS, and these will be broadcast later. One of their recitals will also be recorded and broadcast during the Festival. Kathleen Reardon (mezzo) and Keith Field (piano) also returned to New Zealand recently after studying for three years in England. Of their two recitals the second is noteworthy for the inclusion in the programme of the Schumann Frauenliebe und Leben which Miss Reardon, who has specialised in German Lieder, : will sing. ss As has been customary in the past a series of specially chosen films will be screened at this year’s Festival and not

all of them will be revivals. Rashomon is a Japanese film which New Zealanders will find strange but beautiful. It won the Venice Film Festival Grand Prix in 1951. Equally strange and no less entrancing is The Silent World, made by the famous underwater explorer Jacques Yves Cousteau. Shot in colour thé" stars are the fishes and plants of the submarine landscape. But if colour and music were the only standards of judgment then Puccini, the story of the composer, must rank with the highest. For the music-sung by Marta Toren, Beniamino Gigli and Nadia Gray among others-is excellent and the film was photographed by Claude Renoir. And for humour theére’s Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush-a vintage film to which the master has now added narration and music. Some of the smaller Festival attractions have novel interest. One such is the programme W.Z. Folk Songs and Ballads collected and narrated by Rona Bailey, sung by James Delahunty accompanied by the guitarist Neil Colquhoun. Mrs Bailey’s material dates back to 1860 and will revive among the older members of her audiences many memories. Drama both heavy and light is well represented. T. S. Eliot’s verse play Murder in the Cathedral will be presented by the Auckland Drama Council for a season of five nights. It records the murder of Archbishop Thomas A’Beckett in Canterbury Cathedral in the year 1170, but Eliot incorporates symbolic overtones in Beckett’s martrydom contrasting the power of God with man’s lust for power. The ‘producer is Sidney Musgrove. In lighter vein is the Wellington Repertory Theatre’s production of My Three Angels by Sam and Bela Spewak. Filmed as We’re No Angels with Peter Ustinov, Humphrey Bogart and Aldo Ray, the play has been immensely successful, and with a strong. cast featuring Alan Jarvis, John Roberts and Neville Toogood as the "angels" the Auckland season should prove no exception. Produced by Elsie Lloyd, supervisor of Commercial Division NZBS women’s programmes, My Three Angels will run for eight nights. For the children there will be two performances of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, an adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale by Jessie White. It is a simpler version of the story than the film’s and is produced by the Children’s Theatre.