An Evening with Brahms at 1YA

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 38, 5 April 1929, Page 14

An Evening with Brahms at 1YA

q YA’s programme for Friday, April 12, will be "An Evening with Brahms." Brahms ranks as one of the finest of song writers. His melodies have a fine ‘line’ and his rhythms and harmonies are now sombrely, now exhilaratingly expressive. His emotion is often deep and always true. The complete musical programme, both vocal and instrumental, will be Brahms’ compositions. The singers will be Madame Mary Towsey’s Quartet. Madame Towsey will sing " True Love," "In Summer Fields," and "Love is Forever." "The Forge," one of the songs to be sung by Miss Mollie Atkinson, is one of Brahms’ most vigorous songs. A maid sings of her lover, the smith, whose cheery hammer rings on the anvil like a peal of bells. As she passes, she sees with admiration his prowess at the forge, where the flames roar and blaze forth around him. The accompaniment, in its bold strokes, suggests the energy of the smith and the clang of his hammer. "The Sapphic Ode," to be sung by Miss Edna Peace, is a memory of the beauty of roses, wet with dew, and of the beloved one’s kiss, when two souls are moved with deep emotion. Musically, it is a song of intense beauty. The elegance and perfect shape of the long phrases that compose the melody should be noticed. Mr. John McDougall, tenor, will sing "Sunday." Sunday is the happy day on which the lover first saw the maiden whom he feels is the one for him, for she has a thousand charms. All the week he will cherish the smile she gave him; but that, sweet as it is, will not content him. " Would to heaven I were with her to-day!" is his fervent exclamation. In "The Message," to be sung by Mr. John Bree, the lover begs the breeze, as it gently fans his beloved, to listen, and, if she should be wondering if he still lives in sorrow, to whisper to her that he was indeed in the depths of gloom, until new hope came to him, at the moment his loved one thought of him. On the instrumental side of the programme, Mr. Cyril Towsey, pianist, will play the very difficult " Andante " from " Sonata in F Minor." The Auckland Trio items will include "Three Hungarian Dances." Brahms’ interest in Hungarian folk-musie was aroused by his going on a concert tour with Remenyi, a violinist partly of Hungarian extraction, who included some of that country’s tunes in his programmes. Later, Brahms more than once used the rhythms and melodic peculiarities of the airs in his orchestral works-notably in the last movement of his Violin Concerto, the sprightly vim of which many listeners will recall.