THE WEEK’S RADIO Richard Strauss's "Mozart Opera'

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29746, 13 February 1962, Page 10

THE WEEK’S RADIO Richard Strauss's "Mozart Opera'

Today, when Richard Strauss is regarded as the last of the romantic composers, it is often forgotten that for many years he was looked on as a dangerous revolutionary in music.

What turned the tide of 1 opinion was his most famous 1 opera, "Der Roeemkavalier." i which will be heard from i 3YC at 7.45 p.m. next Mon- < day. Before “Rosenkavalier” Strauss had written "Salome” and "Elektra," two experiments in morbid psychology and grisly atmosphere. When he finished “Elektra," Strauss as well as the outraged public was ready for a change, and he announced that next time he would compose a Mozart opera. He was not far wrong. In 1909 his librettist. Hugo von Hoffmansthal, put forward the first hints of a new, gay opera with “large roles for a baritone and a graceful girl dressed as a man.” Less than two years later, “Der Rosenkavalier” had its first performance, at Dresden on January 26, 1911. In the meantime, though, the plot had become more complex and had gained a new central character—the 1 Marschallin, a beautiful woman of 32 whose life ' reaches a point of crisis when * she realises she must give I up her 17-year-old lover, Ocl tavian, to a girl who is of a younger generation. Tlie second plot revolves round the boorish figure of the Marschallin’s country cousin, Baron Ochs, who is engaged to young Sophie von Faninal. Octavian is chosen as Och’s

emissary to present a silver rose to Sohpie and the young couple fell in love at first sight. Octavian manages to bring about the discomfiture of Ochs, who departs crestfallen. Octavian is left hesitant between the Marschallin and Sophie, but the former realises that her affair with the youth is finished and in a great trio she yields him to Sophie. The action takes place in

the Vienna of Maria Therese and the music is a mixture of the Viennese waltzes of 100 years later and Mozartian pastiche. The presence of the waltzes has led to much confusion to Richard Strauss’s relationship to Johann Strauss—there is none—and in one place “Der Rosenkavalier” was actually billed as “a new operetta by the Waltz King.” The performances to be heard on Monday was recorded by the Belgian Radio and the cast includes such well-known international artists as Hilde

Zadek (soprano) as the Marschallin, Ira Malaniuk (contralto) as Octavian, Wilma Lipp (soprano) as Sophie. Otto Edelmann (bass) as Ochs, and Erich Kunz (baritone) as Faninal. Wilhelm Loibner conducts the Belgian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Ghent Royal Opera Chorus. Menuhin And Orchestra Musically, 1962 seems destined to be remembered as a vintage year for violinists. Visits are scheduled by three of the greatest living violinists—Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci, and Leonid Kogan—■and the first of them will be heard with the National Orchestra from the YC's at 8 p.m. on Saturday.

Yehudi Menuhin will play the recently-discovered early Violin Concerto of Bela Bartok and the famous Concerto in D major of Brahms. The programme will begin with the Overture to the ballet, “The Creatures of Prometheus,” by Beethoven, and Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto. Acting To Music The English soprano, Joan Cross, who is now principal of the National School of Opera, began her professional career in an amateur way as an unpaid chorus singer at the Old Vic, in the 1920’5, when Lilian Bayliss used to put on opera there as well as plays. As she explains to John Amis in Talking About Music” from 3YC at 8 p.m. tomorrow, her experience at the Old Vic had a lasting effect on Joan Cross's career. She became known particularly as an acting singer and since her retirement she has specialised in preparing young singers for the lyric stage. She created leading roles in five of Benjamin Britten’s operas and she is heard in a recorded extract from what many critics consider the finest of his operas —“The Turn of the Screw,” in which she sings the old housekeeper, Mrs Grose. Also to be heard in the programme are a reading of T. S. Eliot’s poem, “Growltiger’s Last Stand.’’ with a flute, piccolo, 'cello and guitar accompaniment by Humphrey Searle, and a talk on young American composers by a middle-aged American composer, Aaron Copland A He finds four main streams in

the young men’s music—serial technique, electronic music, cross-fertilisation of jazz and classical style, and “far-out” experiment, but no interest in nationalism or neo-classic-

ism .The younger composers, he says, feel American music was established for them by his generation. Greek Play Euripides’ tragedy, “Hippolytus,” seems to be a favourite with modern translators, for since the war it has been broadcast in England many times in four different versions. Gilbert Murray's translation was used in a 8.8. C. “World Theatre” production in 1946 and since then the Third Programme has presented the play in three other versions. A fifth version will be heard in a “World Theatre” production from 3YC at 8 p.m. on Friday. It is by two young scholars and poets, lain Fletcher and D. S. Came-Ross, and was originally published in the international review, “Adam,” when it received high praise from critics for its poetic feeling, variety of colour and reliability of interpretation. “Hippolytus” is about the guilty, desperate love of Queen Phaedra, wife of Theseus, King of Athens, for her stepson, Hippolytus. The young man is vowed to chastity and responds to Phaedra’s love with loathing

and scorn. Behind the human passions is the influence of the rival goddesses. Artemis, to whom Hippolytus is dedicated. and Aphrodite, whose power has subjected Phaedra

“Unexpected I illage' The unexpected thing about the village of Botton, in Yorkshire, is its inhabitants. Nearly all of them are mentally handicapped. In “The Unexpected Village” (3YA, 8.30 p.m., Mondayi, listeners will hear recordings made by Hallam Tennyson when he visited these sub-normal young people and their coworkers. as the people who look after them are called. He went there, he says, regarding the inhabitants of Botton, as people to be pitied. “But not for long. For one thing, it’s difficult to feel pity for people who don’t feel any for themselves." The secret of Botton is that the inhabitants learn to work, to do things they would never have been thought capable of, and this gives them a feeling of usefulness and co-operation. They enjoy their work and helping to run their own community.