The Week’s Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 939, 9 August 1957, Page 23

The Week’s Music

by

SEBASTIAN

FOLK song, straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were, continues to gain in favour, and the number of popular collector-singers increases steadily. We have had Negro spirituals, Burl Ives, "All Day Singing," and others, mainly untrained or natural voices. Now we hear William Clauson, the much-lauded American troubadour, who is soon to be here in person. His is a smooth, trained voice without the rasp in its timbre that we are beginning to expect in folk singers, a versatile organ that can sound from a mellow baritone up to a comic falsetto, never losing the essential qual-dty-that of clear enunciation: for even when the words are nonsensical (as in "The Bold Fisherman") they control all the rhythm and meaning of the song. The gems we heard (YA link) were from one of his successful recordings, and if his singing in the flesh is as impressive, we will be well rewarded if we listen to"him. From the tragic to the farcical, from old sea ditties to Welsh tunes, he has an all-too-rare insight and zest; and his own guitar accompaniments make a first-rate setting, not too complex, not’ obscuring the song. Folk song represents some of the best marriages of words and music that we know, and with Mr Clauson officiating as priest, these wedings go without a hitch. I find an unpleasant diet awaits. me; I shall have to eat my words as far as Valda Aveling is concerned. I have heard three of her recitals (YC links), and at least in harpsichord work there is no doubt that solo playing is her metier. Until one hears the instrument thoughtfully and intimately played,

there remains in the mind the impression of impersonal or inexpressive sounds, with the mechanics of it all looming large in one’s consciousness. Yet how different, for instance, the colour in a true harpsichord work like the G Major.Sonata of Scarlatti; here the brilliant jingling scales and arpeggios are interspersed with rather pathetic little interludes, which with the registration used, sounded almost like a Spanish guitarist in the throes of a serenade. Again, all pianists at some stage struggle with Handel’s "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations; but few of them can realise on their instrument the tonal contrasts, the thrumming figures and the whirlwind runs in the way that we heard here. As a pianist, Miss Aveling seemed a little less happy; but I shall remember the harpsichord recitals with pleasure.