“THE PRESS” PREVIEW OF THE FESTIVAL (2)

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30678, 18 February 1965, Page 15

“THE PRESS” PREVIEW OF THE FESTIVAL (2)

N.Z.B.C. Concerts „ New Zealand artists will have the limelight in the two concerts by the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra during the arts festival. On March 4, the widely travelled pianist, Janetta McStay, will be the soloist in the Grieg Piano Concerto. For an all-Beethoven programme on March 6, more than 400 local singers will join the orchestra for a performance of Beethoven’s "Choral” Symphony. The soloists will be Heather Begg, formally principal mezzo-soprano of Sadler’s Wells, Charles Naylor, a Wellington bass, Elisabeth Hellawell, soprano, and Peter Baillie, tenor, who have both had extensive experience outside New Zealand. Both concerts will be conducted by Juan Matteucci. National Band There will be two public appearances by the National Band of New Zealand which, according to critics who have already heard the 1965 combination of 60 players, is the finest yet A street march, from Victoria square by way of Colombo and Cashel streets to the King Edward Barracks at 10.30 a.m. on Monday, March 1, will precede a 12.30 p.m. lunch-hour concert there. The band will be the feature of the open-air band display at the A. and P. show grounds on Sunday, February 28, from 2.15 pun. (admission 3s 6d) Six local brass bands, a girls’ marching demonstration and pipe bands will also be on this programme. The National Band will include in its Sunday programme a 12-minute exhibition march involving the most intricate formations and movements ever attempted by a New Zealand band. All this and a large repertoire of music was intensively rehearsed for the New Plymouth Festival of the Pines during the Christmas holidays. For nine hours a day, the band rehearsed programmes for its New Zealand concerts and North American tour in August Mr N. A. Thorn, of Dunedin, is the director. His assistant is Mr Rank Smith. The marching display by the band was devised by the drum major, Mr Evan Musgrove, of Blenheim, one of the country’s most dexterous manipulators of the drum major’s staff. His marches should bear comparison with the complex patterns executed by American bands which are the most dashing performers of fancy marching. The hour’s programme on March 1 includes the "Three Bears Suite,” by Eric Coates, an amusing but challenging composition based on

the nursery story and not before publicly performed in New Zealand. The rf fiat cornet section <rf 11 players will perform » version of Agostini’s “Three Trumpeters.” The eight trombone players’ contribution will be “The Tromboneers.” Other music on this programme is Verdi’s “Force of Destiny” overture, Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody, No. 2,” and a new arrangement of “Stardust,” by Hoagy Carmichael. The admission charge for the concert will be 3s. The National Band will be making two long-playing recordings for an American company while assembled in Christchurch. Folk singers Fourteen members of the University of Canterbury Folk Music Club will sing in the Festival Hall on Thursday, February 25. It will be a lunch-hour concert beginning at 12.30 p.m. (Admission 2s 6d.) Most of their programme will be American folk songs; old songs from the Appalaccians, new music in the folk idiom by such writiers of protest songs as the young Chicagoan, Bob Dillon—“ The times are changing.” Many of the songs come from the depression days of the nineteen-twenties and thirties—“l’m blowing down that old, dusty road,” as recorded by John Steinbeck in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Negro songs include “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child." The singers will provide their own accompaniment with guitars,banjos, double bass and harmonica.

Madrigals Madrigals are an Italian song form so, appropriately, a Fiftdtnth-Century Italian Madrigal will be the major work in a concert in the Christchurch Cathedral on March 4 by the University of Canterbury Singers. Possibly making its Now Zealand debut, the work is Jakob* Arcadelt’s “Chiare fresch’e dole! acqtne,” a setting of verses written by Petrarch in the Fourteenth-Century. This will be sung in Italian by the 25 singers. The 40-minute recital includes a second Italian work, Palestrina’s "Introduxit me rex." From the rnaqy Elizabethan madrigals, of which few aife suitable for singing in church, Thomas Weekes’s “Thule, the periodl of cosmography,” an amusing song a bout world geography, and John Dowland’s “Weep you no more,” have been chosen. Three modern madrigals will also be sung—Kadaly’s “Hymn Ao King Stephen” from a coronation collection, Finzi’s “Now the white flowerf®* days,” and Vaughan Williams’S "Silence at music.” 'JCathedral Mass Schubert’s Mass in C will "be sung for the first time with an orchestra in the Christchurch Cathedral Oil Thursday, February 25. Although thills work is sung regularly by the Cathedral choir with organ accompaniment, for the festival lunch-hour concert: it will be performed as scored, with strings and trumpets of the Chris,'church Civic Orchestra under John lUtchie. The choir consists of 22 boys nnd 14 men. Normally sung in Latin, the Mass will be performed in E nglish. The Mass is the earliest of Schubert’s four Masses and full of spontaneous melodic invention. The choir will also sing some Sixteenth-Century Evensong Festival Evensong at the Christchurch Cathedral on Sunday, February 21, will include an anthem by AJex Rowley, “Praise.” This is an amthem in praise for the arts and was ch oserT for the appropriateness of its words. After the service, Vernon Griffiths's “Procession for a Festival,” written for the visit of the Queen to the Cathedral in 1954, will be played. Other New Zealand compositions will be hea at evening services during the festiveal. Organ recitals by Mr C. Foster Bro' i n before each service will be an extension of the usual preliminaries, ai'id will include some works by Bach.

From India Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar player in the classical Hindustani tradition, will give one concert (February 26) in the Civic Theatre. In India, he is regarded as the greatest composer and sitarist and he has introduced India’s musical forms to many Western audiences. The sitar has six melody strings and 13 for sympathetic resonances. Hindustani music is based on a system of ragas, notes selected from an octave divided into 22 and used according to traditional regulations to express a particular feeling. About 150 ragas are available to musicians whose choice may depend upon their feelings at the time of the performance. As musicians work in this intricate and refined art, they increase the number of ragas or colourings, and modify old ones to evoke finer or more meaningful shades of expression. Although a lot of understanding is needed for full appreciation the impact of this music can be immediate on even the unaccustomed ear. Western critics have described Ravi Shankar as a thrilling musician, a master of evocative improvisations.

Movie club From the cameras of amateur movie makers come 30 films to be shown in the Christchurch Movie Club’s festival in the Canterbury Museum lecture theatre for three nights from February 22 (admission 2s 6d). There are travel films, a mystery, a satire on yoga, a flower film set to music from “Swan Lake” and shot in time lapse, social studies and animal films. From Dunedin come, examples of the cartoons being made by Mr Fred O’Neill using plasticene figures. His work has achieved world-wide fame. Films from Canada and Australia are in the programmes. Most of the films are in colour and are accompanied by recorded sound. The flower picture, “Prelude to Spring,” from Canada, has won awards in Canada, Europe and Japan. “Boys of Boys’ Town,” by a Brisbane movie maker, is a documentary which won a magazine award for the best 16mm film of Australia last year. Several films by New Zealanders concern foreign travel and people abroad. “Siam,” by Marie and Lindsay McLeod, of Dunedin, was a prize-winning film in 1964.