The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1052, 23 October 1959, Page 21

The Week's Music...

by

GRAHAM

PATON

‘| HE Hollywood Quartet must surely ‘" rank among the best. As a machine it functions with brilliance and precision, its intonation is impeccable, its tone is consistently warm-often juicy -with never a trace of that mean, gritty sound that mars lesser quartets. Nor do you get any impression of stuffy pedantry from its style, only the sense of players setting about the music with a large-hearted enthusiasm. The quartet’s energy and ardour are remarkable. At times, though, the ardour is over-\ done. In the outer movements of Haydn’s quartet, Op. 77, No. 1 these qualities. were both captivating and seemly; less so, however, in the slow movement. The use of too-insistent vibrato in melody playing and an occasional slide on a string to point the tear in a phrase may possibly tell us that players feel their music deeply;

it does not indicate a revealing insight into the slow movement of Op. 77, No. 1-a less demonstrative treatment might. If the Hollywood Quartet saw this Viennese classic in too florid a light ~-Haydn with a dash of semitic sensuality about him-they made no miscalculations in the fervid world of late Beethoven. The Op. 132 quartet emerged in smooth coherence (no mean achievement) with a wonderfully sensitive balance and shading of parts; the reading itself had no suggestion of either shal-

lowness or over-statement about it; a quiet radiance and a feeling of longstanding intimacy with the music were projected instead. Then there was, also, the tremendous rhythmic vitality and spontaneity of their playing to admire in the performance of Bartok’s third quartet, a work whose asperities seemed to soften in the warm luxuriance of the players’ tone. It will be very much to our discredit if we do other than chase the remaining broadcasts of the Hollywood Quartet. In a series of concerts the National Orchestra showed that, like the rest of us, it has been greatly stimulated by the visit of the Czech Philharmonic. Not

only has ensemble been commendably tidy but the strings, especially, sound in better shape-stronger in tone, more urgent in phrasing. Guest tenor, William Herbert, gave a musicianly if otherwise somewhat neutral performance of Gerald Finzi’s compact, lyrically-fired work-Dies WNatalis.. Cheek by jowl, Wagner’s Gotterdammerung prelude came as a piece of portentous windi-ness-and gauche programming. But we cannot have enough of the initiative which led to the playing of Karl Amadeus: Hartmann’s fifth symphony later in the week, even if this adroit, brittle clever-fast-rhythm music has little to offer the spiritually hungry.