Radio: Monteux & Son; Cribbing In Oratorio

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30759, 25 May 1965, Page 6

Radio: Monteux & Son; Cribbing In Oratorio

Before his death last year, Pierre Monteux recorded several works in which he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra with his son Claude as flute soloist. These works will be broadcast from 3YC on Thursday evening. According to Decca Records, the recording session was the first occasion that father and son had combined in a performance. Pierre Monteux was 89, the world's oldest conductor, and an active musician until his death. He set a record for continuous service to music as Toscanini, who also lived to the age of 89, retired after after his 87th birthday. Claude Monteux, a son of the second of Moriteux’s three marriages, has an international reputation as a flautist, and plays with a warm sweet tone. In recent years, however, he has devoted less time to solo work and more time to composing and to his post as conductor of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. The works that will be heard in this programme are Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits from “Orpheus” which has an important flute solo; Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D; and Debussy’s “Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.” Great Plagiarism Handel assembled his own text for his oratorio “Israel in Egypt” concerning the flight of the Israelites across

the Red Sea, but according to Harold C. Schonberg he cribbed the music left and right. “Handel stole from some obscure composers and even from himself. Strictly speaking, he plagiarised, even though by the time he got through with the borrowed material it emerged pure Handel. And, of course, pure Handel is monumental.” Part I, for instance, is mainly a reworking of his “Funeral Anthem' for Queen Caroline” yet it seems perfectly related to the other parts of the oratorio. The work is more choral than most oratorios, but the orchestral part includes some interesting musical painting. A performance by the Christchurch Harmonic Society conducted by William Hawkey, recorded in April, will be broadcast from 3YC this evening. “Musical Pianist” The music critic of “The Times” recently described John Ogdon as about five times as musical as any other pianist in Britain. “Though this does not mean that he plays consistently with such finish (or even with such persuasiveness) as some of his colleagues, the virtue illumines his recitals,” the critic said. “His musicality is proclaimed in his repertory, which changes all the time and pays as much respect to contemporary music and the supposedly less than great creative originals of the past as to the favourite com-

positions of the great masters.

And it can be heard in his ability to play a simple piece with complete, spontaneous directness so that it sounds most heaven-storming flight of rhetorical eloquence; though this is not to deny that he can surge and thunder the virtuoso! romantics with the best of them when the mood is upon him.”

This pianist, who visited New Zealand last year, can be heard on two programmes this week from 3YC, on Thursday as the soloist in a performance of Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini” recorded in Roumania at the Enesco Festival, and on Saturday playing works by Chopin, Schumann, Debussy and Busoni. Enesco Symphony Georges Enesco’s reputation as a violinist and conductor somewhat overshadowed his work as a composer so his music,’ which has a distinctive character and is often based on attractive Roumanian folk tunes, is not often heard. Constantin Silvestri, a Roumanian pupil of Enesco, has become noted as an interpreter of Enesco’s music and will be heard leading the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Enesco’s First Symphony from 3YC on Saturday evening. The programme will also include Malcolm Arnold’s Comedy Overture “Beckus the Dandipratt” (a dandipratt is an urchin), and Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for Strings.