THE WORLD OF MUSIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 99, 29 April 1933, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE WORLD OF MUSIC.

DIAPASONS AND ECHOES.

FROM FAR AND NEAR,

(By ORPHEUS.)

COMING CONCERTS. Lewis Eady Hall. \Xav 2.—l<en Barnes Song Recital. May 7.—society of Musicians, Brahms Centenary Celebration. . , May s.—Auckland Chamber Music Society, May 3 11.—Denis Sheard-Lillian Qufinn ReCltal ' Town Hall. May 4. —Auckland Municipal Choir, Brahms MaV 25.—Royal Auckland Choir, first concert. ' A branch of the British Musk Society has been inaugurated in Dunedin. Mr. Paul Vinogradoff is to give another pianoforate recital here on May 10. Negotiations are under "way for a broadcast of a performance by the Spivakoveky Trio by station 2YA. The annual conference of the Music Teachers' Association of New Zealand will be held in Dunedin from May D to 12.

The annual meeting of the Auckland Choral Society will be lield in the Choral Hall on Tuesday evening next, May 2, at 7.30 p.m. A rehearsal -will follow.

The assisting artists at the Brahms celebration concert to be given by the Municipal Choir next Thursday evening will be Messrs. H. B. Coney, Trevor de Clive Lowe and H. C. Luscombe.

Besides playing an abligato to several songs at the recital to be given by Mr. Len Barnes on May 2, Mr. Haydn Murray will play the _ following violin solos: —"Tambourin Chinois" (Kreisler), "Praeludium and Allegro" (Pugnani.)

John Brownlee and Raymond Lambert will take part in the concert to be given by the Wellington Symphony Orchestra on May 4. Grieg's A Minor Pianoforte Concerto will be played by the orchestra, with Mr. Lambert as the solo pianist. This concert is to be broadcast by the four YA stations.

No less than six concerts are to be given in Wellington in connection with the forthcoming celebration of the Brahms centenary next month. At these concerts many examples of his various forms of musical expression will be given, including lieder, chamber works, solo instrumental, choral and orchestral compositions. Much enthusiasm is being shown in the organising of the celebration.

Extract from the music column of a daily paper:—J. A. Fuller Maitland also says very wisely: "Tolstoi, in 'The Kruetzer Sonata,' proved to his own satisfaction that music by itself could excite" a particular desire; "but it is extremely doubtful if any of the writer's admirers has succeeded in reading into Beethoven's music the meaning the novelist found (or put) there." (Still, the spelling of the first syllable of Kreutzer as "Kruet" does certainly 'savour' of an attempt by . someone, other than Tolstoi, to associate something 'spicy' with the celebrated sonata!)

"Toecanini's memory, Toscanini'a insight, are natural gifts. Where Nature has been less generous, no remedy avails. But it is interesting to note that these exceptional and valuable qualifications have bred in him a sense of humility than of power. It is impossible to watch him at work without feeling the conviction that this man is the servant of the composer, that he expresses not his own, but the composer's thought. This is borne out also by the fact that while any third-rate pianist never hesitates to speed the pace or retard it, as the spirit moves him, while rtany third-rate conductors have no scruple in tampering with orchestral scores of great masters, Toscanini never departs from the written note, and invariably gets to the spirit (by following scrupulously every indication the composer has given. He resembles in this Hans Eichter, the sum of whose alteration in the vast repertory that was his consisted of one bar in the first violin part of the Ninth Symphony."—(Ferruccio Bona via in the "Daily Telegraph.")

"It was at a church concert in a Mount Eden suburb, Auckland, in the years of one's youth. A sturdy flourmiller was the chairman, a John Bull of a man, portly and important. 'The next item on the programme,' he announced, 'is, I see, a musical number by Mozart. Will Mr. Mozart kindly step on to the platform."' —"The New Zealand Railways Magazine."

The current number of "Music in New Zealand" contains several Interesting articles, including "Memory v._ Sightreading," by L. D. Austin, in which the writer emphasises the fact . that the possession of a faultless memory is as essential to public success as a faultless technique, also another account of musical doings in Vienna, from Trevor Fisher. «

Mr. Bruno Walter, the famous conductor, who recently returned to Germany from the United States, where he had during the -winter conducted tho New York Philharmonic Orchestra, has been barred by Government officials for the second time from conducting a concert in Berlin. The Jewish conductor was also not permitted to direct a concert in Leipzig.

The Spivakovsky-Kurtz Trio, which' opens its New Zealand tour in Wellington on May 11, will be heard here in theTown Hall Concert Chamber on June 22,. 24 and 27. Jascha Spivakoveky, the pianist of the combination, who was here ten .years ago, plays a great deal of modern Russian music. Tossy, his younger brother, is a -well-known violinist, and was the leader of the Berlin Philharmonic at the early age of 18. Edwourd Kurtz, the 'cellist, is a musician with a Continental reputation.

Richard Tauber, the popuTar German tenor, is now singing in English, and very fair English, too. On one of his latest recordings he sings, very beautifully, "Bird Songs at Eventide" and "Because." The orchestral accompaniment to both of these favourite ballads is most tastefully played. These songs may be somewliat hackneyed, but Tauber, by his wonderful artistry, makes new and delightful songs of them. Speaking of Tauber, a gramophone dealer telle me that 90 per cent of his customers, when asking for this artist's recordings, mispronounce the nam© "Taw-ber." No doubt many of them have been misled by hearing radio announcers, who, with few exceptions, almost invariably refer to the great tenor as "Taw-ber"—except -when tSiey call him "Toe-ber" (rhyming with "sober"). Once more let it be said that the "Tau" should rhyme, approximately, with the "Tau" in "Taupo" or "Tauranga."

"We are not among those -who maintain that broadcasting of music necessarily stifles amateur activity," says the "Musical Times." "We have, on the contrary, a good deal of direct evidence to t'he contrary. Our correspondence shows that a considerable number of listeners have taken up the study of an instrument solely as a result of their interest having been aroused through listening to broadcast music. Let this go to the credit side of broadcasting. On the debit side, however, must be placed the -winding-up of a considerable number of old-established music-making organisations. A typical example has recently been brought to our notice. The Corsham Choral Society —Corsham. is a smallish town in Wiltshire —was founded about sixty years ago, and its activities were usually comprehensive, catering for every 6ort of reasonably good taste. It has now %een wound up, owing to various counter-attractions and to the fact that (as the local paper points out), 'when every evening one tunes in to Queen's Hall or to the 8.8.C. studio, one does not feel the old urge to turn out and hear a masterpiece performed by the local society.' But no amount of listening can do for the culture of Corshamites what their weekly rehearsals of choral music of all kinds has done for them." The writer gt\;s on to suggest that all choral societies situated similarly to the Corsham Society should, until the time arrives—as surely it will —when the economic situation will allow of an extension of activities, abandon t'he practice of giving public concerts, and, instead, -work in small parties for the purpose of madrigal, part-song and glee singing, meeting at private houses turn and turn about, and confining such performances as they give to hospitals, schools, or gatherings of friends. The nation (he says) will not for ever be hard up, and a return to the old-time cihoral concert may be easily developed from a small, active body of keen singers, whereas the starting or restarting' of a society might be difficult.