LAURIAN CLUB

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22767, 20 July 1939, Page 8

LAURIAN CLUB

LAST EVENING’S CONCERT CHAMBER AND ORCHESTRAL MUSIC The Christchurch Laurian Club’s first concert of the season, originally planned for early June, took place in the Radiant Hall last night. The programme consisted of chamber music works for quintet and quartet combinations, and concerted works for string orchestra, these latter under the conductorship of the president of the club, Dr. J. C. Bradshaw. Of the orchestral works, the most important was the “Charterhouse” suite of Vaughan Williams. This suite (an orchestral version of the original pianoforte suite of the same name) consists of a prelude and five pieces, these being: Slow Dance, Quick Dance, Slow Air, Rondo, and Ostinato. All these are written in a style suggestive of the very earliest of suites, those sets of pavans, galliards, and pipe* tunes which belong to the period that precedes the standardised suites of allemandes, minuets, gavottes and gigues; and Vaughan Williams excels in writing music of this kind, so natural to him are modal thinking, contrapuntal methods and the use of folk-dance rhythms. There is in this suite, too, a fairly well-defined Ravel influence, and this greatly adds to thecharm of the music, and keeps it free from that sombreness which sometimes is apt to overcloud the work of this composer. There was good finish in the playing of the small orchestra which interpreted this work, as there was too in the other orchestral items played on this programme, namely the finely worked out Chaconne in G minor of Purcell, the bright Gavotte in

D of Rameau, and the Fantasia of Vaughan Williams oh the charming Elizabethan tune “Greensleeves,” this last for strings, flute, and piano. The two chamber music works heard during the evening Were a quartet arrangement by Moffat of a trio-sonata by Leclair, played by Doreen Blumhardt (Violin), Hilary Eccles (violin), Marjorie Chapman (’cello), and Lucy Fullwood (piano), and the Pianoforte Quintet in A major (Op. 81), of Dvorak, in which the players were Irene Morris (violin), Thelma Cusack (violin), Ronald Moon (viola), Noel Cape-Wil-liamson (’cello), and Bessie Pollard (piano). The first of these, a work of an early period, is of historic interest primarily, and makes pleasing listening, but the second is a big work, and on this programme it made (together with the “Charterhouse” suite, which immediately preceded it) the musical peak of the concert. This quintet of Dvorak is a many-mooded and strongly rhythmic work, and throughout the players gave it clear definition and certainty, attending well to broad contrasts of mood, and playing with vitality. _ It was only in the more deeply emotional portions, those inner colourings that lie below the surface, that one felt the need of an added sensitiveness. and Of certain individual expressive liberties which the subservient parts could have intensified and rendered still more beautiful by allowing subtle accommodating deviations from the normal moment of pulsation Of beat. In all but this the players excelled and gave of this work an interpretation that brought enthusiastic applause from the appreciative audience. Ih addition to instrumental music, two groups of songs were included on this programme. Mr Robert Lake in the first half sang with excellent clarity of diction Quilter’s second set of Shakespeare songs—a set of five songs that admirably capture the Elizabethan spirit. These were accompanied by Mr Noel Newson. And in the second half Mrs Claude Davies (accompanied by Mr Claude Davies) sang a beautiful set of Grieg songs, selected to make a well-designed group, and interpreted with both warmth of tone and warmth of feeling. _ —E.J.