BERG & BARTOK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1054, 6 November 1959, Page 4

BERG & BARTOK

WO composers whose works were once considered synonomous with barbarism and incomprehensibility, but whose future stature now seems assured beyond all question, are the subject of link programmes to be heard from all YCs next week. They are Alban Berg, the Edinburgh Festival performance of whose opera Wozzeck will be broadcast on Saturday, November 14 (starting 9.19 p.m.); and Bela Bartok, as seen through the eyes of his friend and disciple, Andor Foldes. Wozzeck, which was broadcast here for the first time.earlier this year, is now accepted as one of the undoubted classics of 20th century music. The subject was figst suggested to Berg in 1914, _ when he saw a performancé of a dramatic fragment by the early 19th century playwright, Georg Buchner. The story concerns a rather simple minded soldier,

Franz Wozzeck, who is bullied by his superiors and betrayed by his wife, and whose miseries and hallucinations finally lead to murder and his own tragic death. The musical interest in Wozzeck is in Berg’s use of atonal harmony, in his remarkable orchestration, and in the division of the latter into separate musical forms for each act and scene for the purpose of structural discipline. The Edinburgh performance, recorded by the BBC, is by the Royal Opera of Stockholm, conducted by Sixten Ehrling, with Anders Naslund (baritone) in the title role. A Disciple of. Bartok, the illustrated lecture recorded by Hungarian pianist Andor Foldes when he was in New Zealand earlier this year, was previously heard broadcast as one long programme. This has now been separated into three sections, the first of which will be heard from all YCs at 7.26 p.m. Friday, November 13. Andor Foldes has been a lifelong admirer of Bartok, whom he first met when he (Foldes) was sixteen, in the days when Bartok was the enfant terrible of Hungarian music. Being himself a pupil of Dohnanyi, the then representative Hungarian composer, Andor Foldes had subscribed to this view of the "revolutionary" Bartok, but after this meeting he decided to purchase some of his music; and thus make up his own mind on the subject. The result was that he became the enthusiastic exponent of Bartok that he is today. In A Disciple of Bartok, Andor Foldes discusses both the man and his music, using as illustrations the following works: the Fantasia No. 2; Two Elegies,

Op. 8b; Eight Pieces for Children; 15 Hungarian Folk Songs; Improvisations, Op. 20; Sonata 1926; Music of the Night; two items from volume 6 of The Micro-cosmos-the Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythms; and From the Diary of a Fly. National Orchestra Studio Concerts Next week Alex Lindsay will conduct the National Orchestra in the first two of a series of live studio concerts which will be broadcast from all YC stations. In the first concert, to be heard on Tuesday, November 10 at 8.0 p.m., the Orchestra will play the Overture to Don Giovanni and the Tchaikovsky Sixth Symphony. The second concert on Thursday, November 12, will comprise William Boyce’s The Prospect Before Us,

Delius’s Summer Night on the River, Milhaud’s Saudades do Brazil and Gershwin’s An American in Paris. The first broadcast performance of a work by the New Zealand composer Larry Pruden, will be a feature of the third concert in the series (to be heard on November 17). This is his Harbour Nocturne, a work scored for two flutes, two clarinets, horn, trumpet, timpani, percussion and strings. Written in 1956, this composition had its first performance at the Cambridge Music School of that year, where Larry Pruden was conducting the composers’ class. This concert will also include works by Purcell, Delius and Wagner. The fourth and final concert to be conducted by Alex Lindsay, on November 19, features the Symphony Ne. 34 in C by Mozart, the Mother Goose Suite by Ravel, and Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten. Further live studio concerts will be heard in December, the conductor in this case being Vincent Aspey. The Rosner String Quartet

This year the Francis Rosner Chamber Music Ensemble celebrated its tenth year of continuous existence. First formed in 1949, when Francis Rosner was approached by the Wellington Chamber Music Society to organise a concert, the ensemble -has over the years earned a high reputation through its frequent broadcasts, and its concerts for schools and adult chamber music enthusiasts alike. Although the players may change according to the demands of the works played, the Ensemble is the only permanent chamber-music group to have played here throughout the last decade. The Francis Rosner String Quartet‘Francis Rosner (violin), Antoni Bonetti (viola), Laurel Perkins (violin) and Marie Vandewart (cello), with Lili Kraus (piano), will be heard from all YCs at 8.59 p.m., Tuesday, November 10, in a recording of part of a public concert recently given in the Wellington Concert Chamber.

NATIONAL ORCHESTRA’S WEEK, NEXT week the National Orchestra will. be heard in live or recorded programmes as follows: November 10, YCs, (conductor, Alex Lindsay); November 12, YCs (conductor, Alex Lindsay); November 14, 2YC; November 15, 2XA.