Broadcast Music for Coming Week

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 38, 5 April 1929, Unnumbered Page

Broadcast Music for Coming Week

By

Bolton

Woods

‘""?Tis the deep music of the rolling world, Kindling within the strings of the waved airAeolian modulations." -Shelley.

From Greig to Grieg. DWARD Grieg, three of whose charming songs will be sung at 1YA on Sunday (April 14) by Miss Madge Clague, preferred writing songs of which he left 150, and short piano pieces, which, while wholly original, are often mistaken for elaborations of folk songs. His output of other music is equally impressive. By a strange coincidence, both Grieg and Ibsen, the most prominent men in the latter-day Norwegian music and letters, traced their descent from Scottish ancestors, Ibsen's forbears coming from Fifeshire, whilst Grieg’s grandfather, Alexander Greig, ,wwas an Aberdeen merchant. Like many others of his countrymen he was concerned in the "Bonnie Prince Charlie" business in 1745, and having to flee his native land, found refuge in Bergen in Norway. The writer has a vivid memory of a holiday visit to Russell, Bay of Islands, over twenty: years ago when the old capital was not the fashionable spot it now is. There he met an old sailor in his 104th year whose grandfather had to fly from Scotland in 1745, going to Norway where he took the Scandinavian equivalent to the surname Smith. It was a thrilling ex- perience to talk with a man who was a boy at sea, before the mast, the same year in which Queen Victoria was born 1819), and who made visits to the Bay of Tslands when whalers thronged the place. The object of these visits was to get ship’s spars at the Bay, and the Russell of those days was a busy, prosperous place. Coming back to Grieg and his grandfather, the latter found it necessary to

change the spelling of his name from Greig to Grieg, to suit the Norwegian pronunciation, and having done this he became a Bergen merchant. Grieg knew all about his Scottish ancestry, and he was deeply interested in Scottish national music, in which he traced many of the characteristics of that of his beloved Norway). In 1888, when he was 45, Tschaikowsky met Grieg during a rehearsal. Describing his fellow-composer, Tschaikowsky, who was so glad to meew the man whose warmly emotional music had won his heart, said:-"‘There entered the room a very short, middle-aged man, exceedingly fragile in appearance, with shoulders of unequal height, fair hair brushed back from his forehead, and a very slight, almost boyish beard and moustache. There was: nothing very striking about the features of this man, whose exterior at once attracted my sympathy, for it would ove impossible to call them handsome or regular; but he had an uncommon charm and blue eyes not very large, but irresistibly fascinating."’ "Off to Philadelphia" WO small, but effective modern Russian compositions, Ippolitov Ivanov’s brilliant ""March of the Caucasian Chief" and Glazounov’s colourful "Dance Orientale," will be played by Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra on Sunday evening next at 2YA. Under the masterful leadership of Leopold Stokowski, this body of musicians has rapidly taken a leading position among the symphony orchestras of the United States. This great organisation was developed from

an amateur orchestra which played ‘under the leadership of Dr. W. W. Gilchrist, an American composer. In 1900 a permanent orchestra was established by Fritz Scheel, who was succeeded by Carl Pohlig, formerly First Court Conductor at Stuttgart. He resigned in 1912, and was succeeded by Stokowski. The orchestra is now almost entirely self-supporting; a pension fund for the personnel has been established anc the artistic achievements include memorable performances of Gustav Mahler’s "Symphony of a Thousand Voices," and most modern and classical orchestral’ masterpieces. The gramophone recordings made to date are famous for their realism and beauty, and more than one New Zealand music lover would like to emulate Paddy Leary, and be "Off to Philadelphia" to hear them. The Wolf. THIS year marks the centenary of the death of a one-time popular composer, William Shield, who, at the ripe old age of 81, passed to his rest on January 25, 1829. Being a man of Durham his first desire was to be a shipbuilder, but at the end of his apprenticeship he turned his attention from building ships to building tunes. As a theatre conductor in Durham, Scarborough and Newcastle he gained much experience and later joined the London Italian Opera orchestra, from which day he never looked back. His compositions for the stage were of a light nature in opera, pantomime and farce. He published a dozen chamber works, two theoretical books and many songs, -Continued on page 2.

Broadcast Music @Continued from front page.) including "The Heaving of the Lead" and "The Wolf." The latter song, which will be sun by Mr. Frank Sutherland at 1YA on Wednesday next, was introduced into the ballad-opera of "The Castle of Andalusia" in 1798. "The Wolf" succeeded splendidly and retains its hold on the popular fancy mainly because it is an easy and effec tive exercise for the bass voice, rather than for any musical merit, in itself For the sake of its bravura it is es pecially dear to amateur bass singers. Shield was a viola player, and in 1817 he became Master of the King’s Music. Many will think kindly of him for bis fine old song. Magyar Folk Music. "A | SYA on Sunday (April 7), Arthur de Grief (soloist) and the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra will play Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasie for piano and orchestra, which is composed of Magyar folk-melodies strung together after the fashion of the rhapsodies. H. L. Wil son tells us these works are charac terised by the distinctly national atmophere of the Hungarian Czardas, which consists of two movements-a lassu or slow movement of contemplative nature followed by a Friss, full of wild exuberance and abandon. Liszt has explain-

ed at length his ideas upon the treatment of Hungarian music by the gipsieg in one of his works, and names the rhapsodies "the expression of certain states of the soul in which are resumed the ideals of a nation." The composer had, apparently, gathered together a large quantity of Hungarian melodies, which he had learnt from the gipsies, and conceived the idea of uniting them in the creation of what he called "Gipsy Hpies." "These fragmentary, scattered melodies," he wrote, "were the wandering, floating , nebulous part of a great whole; they fully answered the conditions for the production of a harmonious unity which would comprehend the yery flower of their essential properties, their most unique beauties-and might be united in one homogeneous body, a complete work, its divisions to be so arranged that each song would form at once a whole and a part, which might be severed from the rest and be examined by and for itself; but which would, nevertheless, belong to the whole through the close affinity of subjectmatter, the similar character of its inner nature and unity in development." Krehbiel says: "Ihe gipsies have for centuries been the musical prractitioners of Hungary, but they are not the composers of the music of the Magyars, though they have put a marked impress not only on the melodies, but also on popular taste. The Hungarian folk songs are a perfect reflex of the national character of the Magyars, and

some have been traced back eenturies in their literature." This exhilarating and brilliant fantasy (composed for and dedicated to Hans Bulow, the famous pianist) may be described as being brilliant throughout, and thoroughly in keeping with the best Lisztian traditions. In the words of one London critic, it is excellent pank holiday music, and carries the hearer along, thrills him, and makes all things gay, sparkling, and full of joy. ' y "Elijah" Again. T 8YA on Sunday next (April 7) Miss Hileen Grennell sings "Hear Ye Israel," from Mendelssohn’s "Hlijah.’ This dramatic song opens the second part of the oratorio, which in some respects is finer than the first. It contains at least as many immortal fragments, and according to Haweis the great danger of monotony is avoided by a variety of new and startling incidents, woven into an _ elaborate whole, which; if it does not exceed the first part in beauty of arrangement, has evidently made greater demands upon the composer, and astonishes the listener by its sustained power and completeness. In the opening solo the highest pitch of exultation is reached, and all the most brilliant soprano effects which are calculated to express the confidence of a burning impetuosity seem to have been well-nigh exhausted. The clear freshness of "I, I am He that comforteth; be not afraid; I am thy God," "I the Lord will strengthen thee, Be not afraid," electrified the soul whenever it is well sung, and as one of the masterpieces of inspired composition it remains to-day among the classics for all dramatic sopranos. Negro and Pierrot. CYRIL SCOTT, pioneer of the moderns in music, is said to have a holy horror of the obvious in melody, harmony, and even in orchestration. He is represented in two absolutely delicious examples of vivid pictorial composition in "Negro Dance" and "Lento," No. 1 of the "Pierrot Pieces," which are to be played at 4YA by Mrs. A. Ernest Drake on Friday (April 12).

The "Negro Dance" has been de scribed by a humorous writer as "the jubilation of a cannibal tribe over the prospect of presently dining on a core pulent missionary." Whatever it may suggest it is the very last thing in wild+ ness and breathless abandon, as if the dangers literally danced themselves, all but to death, with a frantic leap into the air before the final collapse. In the second solo, "Lenti," from "Pierrot Pieces," we find Pierrrot in a pensive mood-in a sort of reveriein which there is much of yearning and emotional contemplation of things that are, and things of his heart’s desire. This lovely music has some of the same vague beauty of the same composer’s "Lotus Land" in it, but colouged more richly and more definitely de A Grand Old Song: "My mother bids me bind my hatr, by Haydn, will be sung by Miss Nita Hopkins, at 2YA next Thursday (April 11), and the song has its own little history. Of course, for upwards of a century it has had such a hold on Hnglish people as to become almost a part of our national treasury of song. It is the favourite of Haydn’s twelve canzonets. The words were originally written by Mrs. Hunter to the andante of a sonata by Pleyel, the French composer and founder of the piano business that still bears his name. Pleyel was come poser, conductor, piano-maker, pube lisher, and all-round good friend to music and musicians in his day. As the favourite pupil of Haydn he followed in his teacher’s footsteps with no less than 29 symphonies, five books of quartets, an opera, and a prodigiony number of smaller works. Haydn r versed the order of the stanzas of this song, so that the second verse, as it stands now, was originally that which to Pleyel’s musie stood first.