The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 946, 27 September 1957, Page 24

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

WAS uncertain at first whether to come out in favour of the Smetana Quartet or not: they have an enthusiastic full-bodied way of presenting their music, not without finesse, that is poorly served by their earlier recordings. These seem to have been rather unreliable, because the sound. of their broadcasts (YC links) was quite different. They have a very telling staccato, a dry humour, and commendable restraint that makes moments of power more powerful. I liked their playing of Beethoven in the early C Minor Quartet, with its whimsi-cal-tragical ideas and brilliant finale. .I don’t think I could love the episodic -Janacek for all his feeling, but this group's performance made an emphatic plea on his behalf. On the other hand, their warm accord with Smetana made a beautiful thing of his E Minor Quartet, with the best of Slovak music implicit in its intimate utterances. The seasons change, and we heave a sigh of probably ill-founded relief as we reach for our thinner clothes and our holiday timetables. The prevailing atmosphere has even affected the NZBS, and we have been treated to a set of programmes variously celebrating the onset of spring-however premature the celebrations prove to be. Fortunately the

flowers and loves of this time have inspired plenty of poets and musicians, so there was no dearth of material. Anita Ritchie, with Margaret Nielsen at the piano, gave a recital of songs on the seasonal leitmotiv (YC link), ranging from Arne to the moderns. These were all well done, with a sunny mood predominating, and with a pleasant range of bright tones. A larger tribute was that heard in a choral and symphonic programme (NZBS) in which Stanley Oliver conducted the Schola Cantorum in the late E. J. Moeran’s Songs of Springtime. These lovely but difficult settings of Elizabethan words were given with an alternate joy and tenderness that savoured more of the chamber group than the full choir, and was the more effective so. The National Orchestra played the bitter-sweet rhapsody A Shropshire Lad by Butterworth, and followed it with Ronald Woodcock as solo viclinist in Vivaldi’s happy concerto Spring from the Four Seasons; Delius’s First Cuckoo sang its placid message, and the Carnaval Overture of Dvorak made a rousing finale to the. concert. Now, having paid homage, we can wait a year before celebrating again-we can do without any homage to winter.