Choir Which Has No Care For Box Office

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 25, 2 December 1938, Page 4

Choir Which Has No Care For Box Office

| Schola Cantorum Sings fa Museum

(SjCHOLA Cantorum choir of Wellington, conducted by Stanley Oliver, is not coneerned with pepularity. It has no subscribers to nlease, it tries for no box oflice figures. lis aim is to present works of Value that have not been heard in New Zealand before. There is a Sthela Cantorum of Paris, formed many years ago, a cunservatorium Gi music. Two decades or so ago a choir called Schola Centorum was formed in New York to present new and little Known music. it is after this body, with due modesty, that the Wellington choir takes its name. So tar the choir has given Vaughan Williams’s "Flos Campi" twice, with the Wellington Symphony Orchestra, and "Pastorale"’ by Arthur Bliss, first performance in New Zealand of a work considered one of the finest of the last 12 years by any English composer. Perhaps the most abstruse work yet given was Ode in a Grecian Urn by the late Gustave Holst,

Choir has £3 veiecs and is restricted to that number. It gives no regulary conserts, but sings just as it feels disposed. If people wish to attend the recitals, they may; if not, the choir does not care, Recital in the Macri Hall of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, will be given on Sunday evening, December 4, and hroedcast by 2YA. This is the sixth programme the choir hes given from the Maori Eall, probably the only building in the country with ecoustics re sembling in resonance the best of the English cathedrals. The choir sings music written for prescntation in such buildings. First performance given hy the choir in New Zealand was conducted by Malcolm Sargent when ht? visited here three years azo. ly said afterwards that the eh would be considered very high grade anywhere in the world. English singer Michael Head and musician Andersen Tyrer both gave the choir extremely high praise when they heard it in New Zealand.