MUSIC IN THE DARK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 927, 17 May 1957, Page 11

MUSIC IN THE DARK

Sir,-Like most of your correspondents I have my own ideas on’Mr L. D. Austin’s opinion; in matters musical. But if there is one thing for which he deserved full marks it was his uncanny ability to handle a cinema orchestra in the days of the silent films. His skill in

finding the right thing for a major film, or adapting the appropriate snippets for a newsreel was remarkable. The type of music he used to draw on, though most of it would make our contemporaries smile now, was for its period of excellent quality. I remember as a youth regularly watching the advertisements for the King’s Theatre, Wellington, not only for the overture and the entr’acte that the orchestra was going to play for that particular week, but also the list of compositions from which the remainder of the musical programme was to be selected. : Mr Austin is in error, however, in giving 18 as the number of players in the King’s Theatre orchestra. Himself included, there were 12-six string players and five others. Even when this orchestra was transferred to the newly-opened De Luxe Theatre in 1924 and augmented, the number, if I remember rightly, was still only 14. Perhaps after all these years a belated compliment is not out of place to Miss M. A. Bryers who for years at both theatres played first violin alongside the leader, Miss Lilian Strangman (later Mrs Fahey), For reasons unknown to me she sometimes «assumed Mr. Austin’s place at the piano, with no apparent deterioration in the efficiency of the orchestra, which is saying a great deal. On™"two of the three occasions when I played the piano for the silent films, I played on the grand pianos used by Mr Austin at the King’s and the De Luxe, How conscious I was of sitting (however nervously) in the seats of the mighty, fumbling over the same keyboards that the great L. D. had used! The films incidentally were The Gold Rush (for which Rachmaninoff in G Minor came in for a terrific thrashing during the famous crazy cabin-scene) and Peter Pan. The third and last occasion was in response to a call of distress from Short’s Theatre (now the Tudor, Willis Street) where the mechanical pianola had broken down. The Musicians’ Union is now much more vigilant against the intrusion of youthful inexperience, but on all three occasions I know the money was more than welcome to an impecunious univer-

sity student.

KLEIDES

(Auckland).