GOSSIP OF THE PLATFORM.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 9 (Supplement)

GOSSIP OF THE PLATFORM.

FROM FAR AND NEAR. (By ORPHEUS.) In future the pianist in tlie IYA trio will be Mr. Eric Waters, instead of Mr. Cyril Towsey as formerly. The Royal Wellington Choral Union experienced a very good season last year, financially speaking. It emerged with a credit balance of about a hundred pounds. Mr. Ernest McKinlay, the well-known tenor, is at present in New Zealand on a health trip. Later he will return to Sydney i n order to do further recordings for the gramophone. A visit is to be paid to New Zealand shortly by Mr. Arthur Hirst, F.R.S.A., a lecturer on music, who has gained a wide reputation in England. His lectures, which are illustrated with pianoforte items, deal with such subjects as "The True Appreciation of Great Music," "The Elements of Beauty in Music," "How Music is Made," and '"Modern Music." Judging by the Press reports he has received, his talks are not to be missed by anyone intereeted in musical appreciation. It is to be hoped that something will be done shortly in regard to the amusement tax which is still levied on musical societies. These organisations are doing valuable educational work, and find it difficult enough to keep their heads above water without bearing additional burdens of this sort. The tax should be abolished as soon as possible. If the arts, presumably an influence for good, are to be penalised, then there seems to be no logical reason why churchgoers (for example) should not also be charged a "devotional tax" or something of the sort. It would be equally absurd. Capetown has a People's Symphony Orchestra, which is supported by taxation. Theophile Wendt, its conductor for the last few years, describes the situation thus: "Every property-owning citizen pays a small sum, I think 6/ or so, and the Municipal Council administers the fund so that all the symphony players have to think about is their music, and all the people have to think about—after their taxes are paid—is listening to it. I need not tell yqu that such a plan takes a great deal off the shoulders of the conductor, and the men as well. This relief shows in the form of a truly efficient orchestra, having a repertoire which takes in all the great orchestral literature from Bach to Richard Strauss, Scribin, Stravinsky and Delius. And, in turn, audiences that, in the beginning, were untutored have cultivated a sound understanding and love of music."

"Can the conductor be dispensed with?" asks an American critic. "W T ould the public miss him?" What prompts him to ask these questions is the action of two famous Continental orchestras, the Moscow Persimfans Orchestra and the Leipsic Symphony Orchestra, both of which have discarded their conductors. "We are in a period where collectivism in art is proclaimed," he says. "The music of the individual has to submit to the needs of the mass. That ought to twve been so always, but, most unhappily, the man at the desk considered himself as a sort of Napoleon, acting not as a representative of the mass, but as tlie 'recreator* of the work. Moscow has given the linest example of an ensemble without conductor, and all the foreign conductors who have visited that town are unanimous in [liaising the high standard of its playing. It goes without saying that the concerts of this orchestra must have been prepared with the greatest care, in more rehearsals than under a conductor's baton. The players were sitting so that they could see each other. They seemed more inspired than an orchestra under a mediocre conductor. For the present, however, conductors have no reason to be uneasy. Their importance may be overrated, but they cannot be dispensed with. Lef us hope that they will succeed in blending individual and collective into a satisfying whole. A great part of musical life lies in their hands.'"