"In a Persian Garden"

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 33, 2 March 1928, Unnumbered Page

"In a Persian Garden"

Outstanding Broadcast by 3YA on March 8 Madame Gower-Burns Grand Opera Quartette. Complete as it will be with full orchestral accompaniment, this entertainment will be one of the important broadcasting events of the year. Set to music pervading which there seems to be the atmosphere of the East, the cryptic verses in which Omar Khayyam puts forth his philosophy of life form the subject of a song cycle which has made the name of Liza Lehmann famous. HEN song cycles were very new Madame Gower-Burns was one of the first to bring them before the New Zealand public. Certainly, in Christchurch, she was the first to produce "In a Persinon Garden." Watkin Mills, the great English singer, on his arrival in Christchurch, was greatly surprised to find that something he thought would be altogether new for New Zealand had already been produced. INCE then Madame Gower-Burns has given this song-cycle several times for the benefit of various musical and other organisations in the Cathedral City, and in other towns. It is very fitting, therefore, that she should be the first in New Zealand to produce for radio the complete song-cycle of "In a Persian Garden." In addition, the orchestral accompani ment throughout will be quite a new thing in New Zealand. The leader of the orchestra will be Mr. Harold Beck, and the pianist will be Miss Aileen Warren, who is well known as such a sympathetic accompanist. AMV U U AMATI \ ¥ u \ SUT ATETH a is ATTA Ww lia AA! AN TTT ALLTHIS CANLIUUTUTTIT ea

| Khayyam-that is, Omar the tent-maker, %| the astronomer, poet of Persia-lived and re oh ‘| died. His fame rests upon his Rubaiyat, the # collection of quatrains or stanzas of four lines each, wherein with great beauty and wealth of imagination he has set forth his philosophy of life. The time of Omar-the time in which he lived, and loved, and wrote and wined-was contemporaneous with that of the subjugation of England by the Normans. He was a scientist, an astronomer, and a metaphysician, and there are works of his on Algebra and Euclid still extant. Yet this great thinker’s message in the Rubaiyat is on the uselessness of thinking. The very meagre knowledge we have of Omar’s life has descended to us in the Testament of one of his fellow students, a man who rose to be Vizier to two successive Sultans of Persia. In fulfilment of a schoolboy promise to Omar, the Vizier would have bestowed re SAH ONSAITITLTT UT — = be) Te IN ULL 4 i

upon ‘him titles and offices, but these were declined in favour ‘of leisure and means to win and distribute knowledge of all kinds, especially that of astronomy. A generous pension from the royal treasury was settled upon the poet, who, possibly before being thus raised to independence had to practise his trade ‘of tent-making, he IALULUULUHH 4 U WS 4 ne SALT ALUIANUHUIE 4 S d) J pe SALUT ll

The remarkable unpopularity of Omar in his own country is probably the cause of his scant transmission abroad, and the MSS. of his poems, mutilated beyond the average casualities of Oriental transcription, are extremely rare, even in the East. Omar died in 1128. The Rubaiyat constitute no formal poem, they are not even necessarily connected; yet they contain the poet’s estimate of the sum of existence, the doctrine of an amiable Epicurean philosophy Omar had sought and found not:"Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and saint and heard great argument, About tt and about; but evermore am Came out by that same door where in I went." Seeing thus, only this world, and the material things in it, he bids us enjoy ourselves while we may:‘"Come fill the cup, and in the fire of spring Your winter garment of repentance fling; The bird of time has but a little way To fly, and lo! the bird is on the wing."

The genius of Edward Fitzgerald made Omar known to the western world seventy years ago in a free translation which enhances. the beauty of the original, and, indeed, even adds successfully a quatrain here and there which Omar did not write. Other translations have ap« peared, but Fitzgerald’s is still first. From it Liza Lehmann selected those stanzas which she has set to music. This musical setting of portion of the Rubaiyat aroused interest immediately upon its appearance, I¢ is so written as to employ all the re sources of a mixed quartette of the highest rank in both solo and concerted work, while the accompaniVA nN U ’ YAM aN VAT Al I ANNE it mf UAL

ment is charac teristic piano music yet sympathetic and origin al in spite of its difficulty. Indeed, the technical difficulty of the ac. companiment hag often been an obstacle to the suc« cessful presentation of the work. AAUTIUAAANAIT VA KA I ANT 7 ni