MUSICA VIVA PLAYERS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26204, 30 August 1950, Page 3

MUSICA VIVA PLAYERS

RECITAL OF CHAMBER MUSIC

The 1950 season of the Christchurch Chamber Music Society ended last evening with a recital in the Radiant Theatre by the Sydney Musica Viva Chamber Players.

The great impression which the Musica Viva group has made during earlier recitals in Christchurch was fully sustained throughout a programme that demanded the highest degree of musicianship in both technique and interpretation. The Beethoven String Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2, with which the recital opened, was played with a brilliance that made light of its technical difficulties. The blend of the strings was perfect, and although the occasionally rather acid tone of the first, violin in the upper register detracted slightly at times from balance, it was .a performance marked by an imaginative appreciation of the varied moods in this delightful work.

Of an equally high standard was the playing of the *Haydn Quartet in F Major, Op. 3, No. 5, well-known for its deservedly popular slow movement, in which the muted first violin sings a contemplative melody over a pizzicato ground by the other strings. The surprise of the evening lay undoubtedly in the Debussy sonata for violin and piano—Debussy’s last completed work —played by Miss Maureen Jones and Mr Robert Pikler. It is a work of controlled emotions that allows, in the second movement, an insight into the composer’s desperate clinging to life. The often indecisive chromaticism of many of Debussy's earlier works has here given place to a purposeful strength that puts this composition into a class of its own among the composer’s work. The music last evening was given an excellent performance, in which the balance be? tween piano and violin was well kept. Intricate rhythmic and dynamicchanges were never allowed to obscure the clarity of line. The tone which Miss Jones obtained from the piano was remarkable, and Mr Pikler's good bowing surmounted many technical difficulties rarely encountered in other Debussy compositions. A spirited performance of Mendelssohn’s first piano trio, Op. 49 in D minor, concluded the recital. Such perfect balance of instruments as was heard in it can only be Obtained by artists who subordinate their individual excellence to the music as a whole. This rather emotional work can so easily 6e made to sound like a bravura piece for three independent instruments, and it can also be made to sound banal. It requires the high artistry and integrity of a group like the Musica Viva Players to give it a performance in which one forgets intrinsic faults in construction, like the long-windedness of the last movement, and occasional lapses in taste, as in the second movement. One cannot praise too much the artistry of Ml* Theo Salzman whose exacting ’cello part blended exquisitely in tone with the piano and violin of Miss Jones and Mr Pikler. It was a recital that one will use as a standard to rfieasure others by One looks forward to further visits by the Musica Viva Chamber Players, whose devotion to good music is so well expressed in their playing. —H.S.K.K.