The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 928, 24 May 1957, Page 22

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

EW ZEALAND composers have been much in the musical news lately, with their cumulative bid for recognition; but very few of us, when we come to think of it, haye ever heard much music by them, with one oer two notable exceptions. It is not that they are disapproved of by authority, but the gap score and performance is all too often an unsurmountable ene, invelving a plethora of negotiations which would dishearten even a Pangloss among composers. A small step forward was heard (YC link) in the Orchestra’s performance of Thomas Gray’s ‘Overture for a Festive Occasion"; this is not a new work, dating as it does from 1939, but is apparently worth reviving. Festive it certainly is, with great variety in orchestral colour and rhythm, and an aura of high spirits reminiscent of some of Malcolmr Arnold’s work; but it would not be a piece to hear every day, ust as too much rich food is indigestble. The Orchestra did justice to its instrumental complexities without trying to inyest it with subtle shades of feeling; and this I think was the right approach to it. I don’t mean that it was all froth, but its atmosphere was the most important feature.

In the same programme James Hopkinson played Nielsen’s attractive Flute Concerto with his usual virtuosity; a little-known work this, appealing more to the expert flautist than the ayerage listener, it is still full of event, with a charming idiom which though modern and individual is fairly conyentiénala feature of much of this composer's work. There was also Schubert’s fourth Symphony, which I can’t recall having heard from the Orchestra previously, but which obviously suits them well. Certain of the wind players may have had regrets about their solo: passages,* but the essential contrasts of moad and tone were eloquently handled, and the whole was effectively balanced on the razor-edge of orchestral technique. I think I’ve heard all of Stanle Jackson’s series (NZBS) of Pay ee | organ music now, and have enjoyed mast of them, partly for their surprises and partly for the quiet but clear registrations, which made the thunder of the ayerage concert organist sound superfluous. Brilliance squeezed forth is frequently taken as proof of the performer’s musicianship. Now al] we need is a series of post-Bach music on the same principles, and the millenium will have arrived. (*See panel, page 6.-Ed.)