The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1051, 16 October 1959, Page 16

The Week's Music...

by

GRAHAM

PATON

WHat was probably the most dazzling and exciting performance in the whirlwind tour of our Czech visitorsTchaikovsky’s Fourth symphony at Dunedin-was heard again in an NZBS recording of the concert. As this work gives a conductor a wonderful’ chance (one which Beecham, for instance, never misses), to make his audience swoon under the impact of sumptuous colour and fiery emotions, much could be expected of the Czech Philharmonic. Given the lavish resources of this orchestraits rich, passionate strings, its brass choir at once mellow and incisive, its remarkably lyrical woodwind soloistsit would be a tame man, indeed, who could not make something of the opportunities Tchaikovsky throws his way. But Ladislav Slovak is no mere routine musician: his nervous reactions to a score would seem to be pitched a few degrees higher than Karel Ancerl’s; he has, also, a more acute sense of forwarddriving rhythm. This last quality enabled him to keep the symphony’s slow movement free from undue sentimental emphasis yet elegant in line and espressivo in phrasing; with its help he was able to keep the scherzo off the ground and all of a piece; it was the chief factor in charging the music’s brilliant display in the last movement with a throbbing electric current so that each climax in turn shot up in emotional

temperature with spine-racing effect. Earlier in the week a rapturous performance of Daphnis and Chloe, implying fine-grained sensibility and a sophisticated technique on the part of the conductor, made it plain that Mr Slovak’s memorable Tchaikovsky was no mere flash in the pan. Without question Lili Kraus, at her best, can bring the gods down among us. It was so in the broadcast from het Wellington recital. And it is probably true to say that, among today’s interpreters of the Viennese classics, she has a vision equalled only by Clara Maskill. In a sense these two artists are complementary aspects of the one view -Madame Kraus more impulsive in manner, more sheerly human in her approach; the other more concerned to erase all self from her interpretation, more detached in attitude and more fastidious about polishing the outward forms. Yet Madame Kraus cuts the more boldly into the substance of Mozart and Haydn; her work is both more stark and of greater emotional weight. The expressive force of her playing of Mozart’s great Fantasy and Sonata in C minor comes directly from her ability to focus the work’s masculine and feminine elements in such a way that the interplay of inner tensions is at a maximum. And Mozart does not ask more than that,