St Matthew Passion at Auckland

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 933, 28 June 1957, Page 4

St Matthew Passion at Auckland

OHANN SEBASTIAN BACH in his prolific career as church organist set the Passion story no less than five times, but the two best-known settings today are the St. Matthew and the St. John. .On Saturday, July 6, the Auckland Choral Society and the Auckland String Players under the baton of Ray Wilson, will perform the St. Matthew Passion, and this performance will be broadcast by 1YC. The principal soloists will be Andrew Gold (tenor) as the Evangelist, Peter Evans (baritone) as Christ, and Gabrielle Phillips (soprano), Mona Ross (mezzo-soprano), Robin Gordon (tenor), and Donald McIntyre (bass). The ‘ripieno part for children’s voices will be sung by a hundred girls from the Auckland Girls’ Grammar School, and the Auckland Presbyterian Broadcast Choir will join in the chorales to give the effect of the audience joining in, as Bach intended.

The Auckland String Players (leader Gwen Ralph) have been augmented for the occasion, and Auckland University College have proviced the harpsichord which Hannah Stratford will play. The organist is Trevor. Sparling. The text, taken from the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapters 26-27, has been elaborated by Bach,in a series of arias, recitatives, chorales and orchestral interludes. The work opens with a double chorus foreshadowing the events on Calvary, and ends again with the chorus in an elegy after the sealing of the tomb. In comparison with the St. John, this is a very personal oratorio, and Bach has used every opportunity for meditation and comment. APRA-NZBS Prize-winners Next week the winning compositions in the recent APRA-NZBS Composers’ Competition will receive their first

broadcast. Mary Pratt and Maurice Till will present The Sea Child, by Dorothy Freed, on Saturday, July 6, from the YAs, 3YZ and 4YZ, and Frederick Page will play David Farquhar’s Variations for the Piano on Sunday, July 7, from the YCs. Variation was the title first given to this work, but when The Listener spoke to David Farquhar he was having second thoughts. "You see," he explained, "I finished it at 2.30 am. on the morn-

ing of the last day, and so I gave it the first name _ that occurred to me. The work itself is a cross between a set of variations and a short suite. There are four movements, Aria, Impromptu, Capriccio, and Epilogue; all, in a sense variation on the aria, but in another sense forming a continuous short suite. So the title Partita for the Piano suits it better, for Partita has been used of both forms. or all the hurry, I like competitions. They give me a deadline and a> stimulus." Both works will be heard a seconi time from the YCs on Tuesday, July 9, and again from the YAs, 3YZ and 4YZ on Sunday, July 14. Mrs Freed told us she was looking forward to hear*ng her songs played by someone else i

"Tt am also very pleased," she said, "that listeners can hear it more than once, as I feel that it may have more of a delayed attraction than immediate ap-peal-I may be wrong. I found it difficult to find a New Zealand poem which fitted my ideas of a- ballad, but this one, ‘The Sea Child,’ by Katherine Mansfield, appealed to me as one that I could set." Mrs Freed has written several songs, and among them was a part-song that was sung at the Cambridge music school. "Several people there asked the composers’ group about part-songs, madrigals, etc.; which small country groups could sing," Mrs Freed said: "I would like to do more work in this field, where there does seem to be a definite need." |