MASTERPIECE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 944, 13 September 1957, Page 26

MASTERPIECE

UT of a week rich in listening, I must pull out the plum: the broadcast version by the National Orchestra and a battery of expert soloists of Tchaikovski’s great opera, Eugen Onegin. Those of us who think in national stereotypes perhaps summon up a bear as a symbol for Russia, like lion for England, and kiwi for New Zealand, and there is a whole modern mystique which equates the Russian genius with everything that is murky, dour and treacherous. The women are lumpy and the men as taciturn as Indian chiefs. Arrant nonsense, of course,

like all. such superficialities, but how many of us would think of the exquisite Tatiana as a Russian archetype? Yet, in her passion and innocence, she is; you will find her in Dosteovsky and Tolstoy, too, always a victim of the cruelty and insensitiveness of the world. Tchaikovski has marvellously rendered this grace and fragility into music, and surely Eugen Onegin is one of the supreme operatic masterpieces of the world, and in its combination of rapture and a poignant sense. of elegy, unique. It was wonderful to hear the whole work, brilliantly directed by James Robertson, and many of the soloists gave remarkable accounts of their roles. The orchestral tone was often wonderfully pure, and in the dance passages, full of spring and élan. Sybil Phillipps and Ninian Walden as Tatiana and Onegin had moments of great poignancy, and I am prepared to suggest that in English, at least, you will get few finer performances than Miss Phillipps of the great Letter scene. She moved through its lyrical tenderness with the surest judgment. Some of the other singers were slightly insecure in some of the more taxing passage work, but as a whole I have nothing but praise for this highpoint of NZBS radio opera. William Austin’s interpolations to the story were exactly right, neither more nor less than one needed, and Ashley Heenan gave a useful and erudite account of Tchaikovski’s achievements and style as an operatic composer. But as warming as anything in a fine evening’s listening was Dr Nicolas Danilow’s touching tribute to Pushkin. Rich with affection and homage, full of nostalgia for the tongue that he can no longer speak as his own, Dr Danilow vividly and poignantly evoked the ripe genius of his country’s greatest

poet.

B.E.G.

M.