The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 935, 12 July 1957, Page 30

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

HETHER they find it more rewarding financially or musically, many overseas artists are making return visits to us this year, and on the whole we are being supplied with all varieties of performer in the good to excellent range of quality. Latest comeback was staged by the Australian violinist Ronald Woodcock, who has been heard in some interesting solo recitals and with the Alex Lindsay Strings -(YC links). With the latter group he played a G Minor Concerto of Vivaldi which was one of the most effective I have heard: an angry first movement full of aggressive glissandi, a sweetly, antiphonal slow section, and a jerkily cogent finale combining the characteristics of the other movements, with the violin being alternately singing and brilliant. This came off very well indeed, and the solo tone seemed to change with the moods, edgy or smooth as the occasion arose. Just as unusual was the Bach G Minor Concerto, known better to most of us as that in F minor for clavier. This version made it perfectly clear which instrument was intended originally; that which on the keyboard is rather bare and unenterprising becomes, on the bowed instrument, a magnificent study in full sonori-

ties not unmixed with humour-as in the echo effects, whose next appearances one can somehow never precict. The "ariso" that forms the slow movement was particularly lovely, and again particularly suited to the violin. Let this be a lesson to any super-purists who decry any form of transcription in Bach. The National Orchestra continues its subscription concerts, working southerly (YC links) and perhaps tiring a little. Seldom heard is the Third Symphony of Schubert, one that might justify the epithet "pretty" were it not for boisterous touches that take it into the realm of full-blooded music. The slow movement especially was well done, the wood wind decided to remain in tune, and the whole sounded perfectly happy. With Jascha Spivakovsky a _ Burlesca of Richard Strauss was played, an unpretentious piece but a pleasant one, which in this performance seemed a trifle uncertain. As for Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasia, I can only say that this was one of the worst things I have yet heard perpetrated in a public concert: the pianist’s tempi were unjust, his notes imperfect, and the Orchestra shared in this confusion of sound to the exclusion of sense. I conclude that either the wildly, applauding audience was hallucinated, or I was. ~