REVIEWS OF NEW MUSIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 8 (Supplement)

REVIEWS OF NEW MUSIC.

We have received two popular numbers from Messrs. D. Davis and Company, Sydney. "Dream Train" is a foxtrot song with a forcible rhythm. It has its attractions, (in particular, tunebut they are obvious ones. "Building a-Nest-for, Mary," a seasonable^. ditty, is; the record of a young man's fancy lightly turning to thoughts of hire-purchase schemes. There is a «oy reference in the last'line but one to the preparations for the coming "bios-, som on the family: tree.". But all is proper. The turie is a very bright little thing, not at all in keeping with the disnial occasion it celebrates, and there is a nice-flavouring of syncopation. A : go6(l 'jumber.. ; i l\ .£•."- ;

One of- , the beet known musical critics in England, "Sinjon Wood".-of "Husjeal Opinion, is ''chucking in his job/'as He puts it in a farewell article. _ He gives various reasons for his •decision, all of which help fco throw light on musical journalism in England. He complains that he is muzzled, and cannot say "exactly what he likes," and saye that the musical papers of England are too timid when dealing with charlatans and bluffers. He "objects to having his remarks stolen by other critics and three months later given as their own." He thinks musical journalism, "dreadful and almost beneath contempt,"- and the paper he has been contributing to for the past six years "the best of a bad lot." This anonymous critic concludes:/'I fear I am leaving a bad impression behind me by writing in thia venomous style. . . I ought, I suppose, to take off niy hat with a smile and make a deep obeisance, instead of putting my fingers to my nose and telling everybody to. go to blazes. But I prefer.not to, so that's that." On the whole, the outburst leads one to sympathiee with this journalist, particularly in : regard to his plea for greater fr&edom of speech.

Bruno Walter, one of the world's greatest conductors, recently took the orchestra for a whole week at the Hollywood Bowl, in Los Angeles, and was acclaimed by vast and .enthusiastic audiences. The Bowl is a huge openair place where thousands of people gather to hear concerts. An American journalist, in describing one of these performances under Bruno Walter's baton, says: "It was that night, in the light of a full harvest moon, that,we truly heard the Mendelssohn 'Midsummer Night's Dream' —magic music that entranced fully 20,000 of us into breathless silence as the fairies indulged in whispered laughter and Bottom gently snored." One cannot help\ thinking, oil reading the above, that this is the sort of place to er.joy music properly in the summer time; not in some, stuffy concert hall or theatre. Now that our own summer is approaching, I hope as many open-air performances as possible will be given by the Municipal Band. Only those who have attended them in tfie past realise how enjoyable, they can be.