RESPLENDENT SOUND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1049, 2 October 1959, Page 6

RESPLENDENT SOUND

by

GRAHAM

PATON

SOME people unable to see beyond their nosés talk of New Zealand as if it were a lazy backwater, a sort of pastoral idyll remote from the highvelocity tensions of the world of postFreud, Harwell’s Zeta and _ telly-pul-verised mass man. But the jets have forced parish-pumpery’s back to the, wall. There is no escape from the technological monster or the latest nemesis. At the bottom of the earth you are just as likely to stumble on a Bolshoi ballerina as make way for a U.K. Lion or thread your way through a posse of musicians from central Europe. Even Royal aunts now stop over for ‘tea. ; Symbo!] of the new dawn is the visit of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. And who is to say that the globe-trot-ting Mr Bernstein and his New York Philharmonic will. not be the next on the list? That some civilised magnate may not be seized with a vision of a Southérn-style version of Bernard

Miles’s Mermaid Theatre with a vista of Rangitoto rather more glorious than the water around Puddle Dock? It is a measure of ‘our cultural ferment that such ideas need no longer be silly daydreams and that we can look at the European .scene with increasing selfrespect. The fateful 48 hours began with a trip to Auckland’s Midlands-evocative Town Hall, with its faded atmosphere of dutiful "Messiahs" and Victorian discomforts, The candid morning light excited the patina on fiddle bellies jutting out from a forest of players. It looked a squeeze on the stage. A note of last-ditch nervous stand was implied in the eyes of local liaison down in the hall; the business of shepherding 120 weary English-sparse travellers from

meal to bed to reheasal had, it seemed, its agonies. Only the inevitable men in overalls nonchalantly going about mysterious jobs seémed part of a saner, unglamorous world. A devout platoon of students rimmed the balcony beyond the conductor. Without its audience the hall was crazily resonant. The brooding chromatic figure from the opening movement of Brahms’s First Symphony was more edgily insistent than usual. The conductor, Karel. Ancerl, a. sturdy absorbed figure, rarely interrupted the music. Perhaps a trombone missed the beat. in an. entry; or the orchestra hurried beyond the pulse in an urgent section. Usually it was enough to use an elbow to emphasise the curve of a phrase or shoot an eye-brow heavenwards to encourage the woodwind. For

the orchestra went through its paces with the air of concentration and general musical alertness that you find with a good quartet. When Brahms’s demon had been thoroughly exorcised everyone trooped into a lobby for elevenses. Slightly distraught (the language barrier) we caught up with Mr Ancerl over a cup of tea. Looking something like one’s idea of Till Eulenspiegel (middle-aged) with an incredibly. mobile face and impulsive gestures he radiated life-force and creature sympathy. And a willingness to test his English ("I understand all’’)..""No," he grinned in a way which vaguely suggested sweat if not tears in the Homeland, "I do not need to say very much to the orchestra. We did all the work in Prague." After a decade with him, they probably knew his intentions as well as he did anyway. The Brahms First? Here Mr Ancerl talked about the life-enlarging power: of such music; its’ place in the musical scheme of things as carrying on the humane ideals of Beethoven; its capacity to bring men together in a common sharing of profound feeling. The problem of audiences? Different everywhere: London’s. are cultivated) and warm; Paris’s less so ("Is it right-snobbish?") And he was resigned to the needs of the East ("in Japan they want Tchaikovsky"). At this point he was whisked

off to an anxious discussion by the stage. It was time to get on _ with Shostakovitch .. . Make no mistake-when evening came it was an occasion, gala-style: there were ladies splendid in haut couture; others come simply for the music. Bespoke on the men or just the functional uniform of gaberdine over-coats. Everyone spun in an orbit of potential appreciation. Two national anthems made the unprimed bob up and down. And at last the chance to judge the visitors on this, their first concert beyond Europe. The opening work-a scherzo for large orchestra by. Jiri Pauer-sounded like the musical equivalent of Soviet realism in art-uncomfortably literal in its interpretation of Nature (in this case the throb of industry); obvious and stereotyped in its "lyricism"-music for Komsomols and devoid of subtlety of mind or freshness of invention. Nonethe-

less it got a brilliant and ebullient performance. It was during the playing of the Shostakovitch First Symphony that the character of the Czech Orchestra became apparent: its resources of refined never-coarse colour, its capacity for attack both delicate and trenchant, its unity of ensemble and constant purity of intonation. As the work of a precocious richly gifted 19-year-old the symphony "is remarkable-its technical aplomb is ceaseless; its light irony sometimes invokes Prokofiev; in its grace of statement in the lento it sometimes recalls Tchaikovsky. In all a symphony abounding in a promise which some think yet unfulfilled in Shostakovitch’s subsequent career. Karel Ancerl showed his calibre in a highly sophisticated, unforced reading of the work, rhythms free as the air, colours distinct yet sensitively graded to the dynamic needs of the score. If the Brahms’s First Symphony made its impact largely in terms of sheer

splendour of sound, impeccable clarity of texture, the beauty of solo woodwind playing-responsible musicians making music without meretricious glamour or glibness-it was also a view of the symphony that left inner emotional tensions, to some extent, unaccounted for. Mr Ancerl, it seemed, took gq somewhat complacent view of Brahms’s postBeethovien grapplings of soul. Surprisingly enough, at the second concert Mr Ancerl- again showed a reluctance to come to grips with the inner emotional current of the music in a work where you would least expect to fault him-the New World Symphony of Dvorak. The quicker movements tended to squareness of phrasing, a short-breathed rhythmic’ policy which inhibited the surge of the movements. On the other hand the largo was as smooth and poignant as you could reasonably expect to hear. The cor anglais played by divine charter.

And if our visitors had. done -nothing else for us but re-instate the Schumann piano concerto, a work which has taken some hard knocks from ‘deadening routine, we should be in "their debt. Their soloist Jan Panenka is a pianist of intense poetic perceptions, whose technique is both elegant and bravura, whose temperament can_ swing. easily from virile authority to a’ heart-easing intimacy as in the slow moyement. | Mr Ancerl himself was at his most masterful in the Ravel transcription of Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibi-« tion. Outwardly he did very. little ex. cepting, of course, those times when the music seethed to the boil. Yet one was aware of a vast effort, of musical will. He set the music in motion, thereafter its course seemed predestined and the Czech Philharmonic produced what was probably the most_ resplendent orchestral sound yet heard in the South Pacific.