Peter Baillie Sings With Orchestra

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30041, 28 January 1963, Page 11

Peter Baillie Sings With Orchestra

The last concert of this season’s “proms” was given by the National Orchestra on Saturday evening to an audience which again filled the Civic Theatre. Mr James Robertson was the guest conductor and showed hiis finesse in musical judgment and his poised artistry in his interpretations and in his control of the excellent team he was directing. This series of concerts has been highly enjoyable and has merited the very wade support given by the public. The programme began with Verdi’s Overture to ‘‘The Force of Destiny.” Its cheerful strains came across stirringly and made a good start for this type of concert. Some very pleasing solo playing was heard. Then Mr Peter Baillie sang some tenor operatic arias in a voice of attractive lyric quality, even throughout its range, and dear in vowel production. He sang, with commendable darity and with dramatic feeling, Verdi’s “Tender and Gently Loving,” Donizetti’s “A Fugitive Tear,” and “Your Tiny Hand is Frozen,” by Puccini. Mr Richard Giese, who recently joiner, the orchestra as principal flautist, was the soloist in Grieffe’s “Poem for Flute and Orchestra”—a work of considerable emational tension and very interesting in its construction. Mr Giese has remarkable tonal control and a most flexible technique which enable him to convey his unmistakeable artistry. The composition called for no .fireworks, but every phrase Mr Giese played commanded full attention. It was restrained and intelligent playing. The first part of the programme ended with Mozart’s "Haffner” Symphony. The first movement was played clearly and there was a bright bloom on the tone in the second. The Minuetto was graceful and the finale was crisp and joyous. The second half of the programme began with Walton’s Facade Suite No. 1 which was skilfully interpreted with appreciation of its sardonic humour. Mr Peter Baillie began his second group of songs with “The King’s Aria” from the new opera. “A Unicorn for Christmas,” by David Farquhar. Mr Baillie sang it well —better indeed than it was sung at the first performance of the opera recently in Wellington; and in some way it was a good idea to let a Christchurch audience hear something of the music before the opera is performed here. However, in its place in the opera the aria contributes well to the charm of the second act in a way that a concert performance of it could not convey. Wrong

entries by the singer in two performances of Rutland Boughton’s “Faery Song” from “The Immortal Hour” caused certain confusion and Mr Baillie’s use of a backward production to get a soft effect caused him to lose vocal quality as well as clarity of line in vowels. “The Song of the Road” from Vaughan Williams’s “Hugh the Drover” was pleasingly sung.

The concert ended with the audience enjoying an outing with “An American in Paris” by George Gershwin. Like many an expatriate, the hero o fthe work was a crash mg bore at times, but the orchestra played with gusto and skill. Arthur Benjamin’s

“Jamaica Rhumba” was offered as an encore. One would have gladly settled just for some Jamaica rum. -C.F.B.