Stimulating Concert Of Contemporary Music

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 14

Stimulating Concert Of Contemporary Music

The Christchurch Society for Contemporary Music provided last evening in the Museum Lecture Hall a programme which was not limited to any one school of twen-tieth-century composers interested in experiment and exploration. Felicity Bunt with Rolf and Wolfgang Just played music for three recorders by an Israeli composer (Zvi Ragan), Benjamin Britten and Peter Racine Fricker. All were charming, and Britten's “Swiss clock” and Fricker’s “Poco Allegretto and Allegro” were specially attractive. Rolfand Wolfgang Just; lan Thorpe (oboe) and a String Trio (Louis Yffer, Romola Griffiths and Regina Gutappel) played a most pleasing set of “18 Variations on an old English folk-song" (“The Cuckpo’) by Karl Marx, a composition professor at the State Academy to Stuttgart. The various tone colours and their blendings were skilfully used here by composer and performers; and, clearly, contemporary creative musicians are justified to regarding the recorders as suitable for inclusion to chamber music groups. Derek Sanders (pianist) played “Quantitaten” 1958 by Bo Nilsson, described as a mainly self-taught young Swedish composer with an actively experimental outlook and dear sense of formal design. Mr Sanders’ interpretation was confident and carried

conviction. In an altogether different

category'(but equally interesting) wu Samuel Barber’s “Excursions", a set of four pieces (“Honfcy Tonk,” “Blues,” “Calypso,” and “Harmonica") which had characteristic American idiomatic qualities and was played with insight and skill by Suzanne Purnell. "Duetti" for violin and cello was the work of Nikos Skalkottas, a Greek composer (at one time a Schoenberg pupil) who lived from 1904 to 1949. Louis Yffer and Thomas Rogers brought thorough understanding and technical expertness to their performance of music which—even at a first hearing—had definite significance.

A “Sonata in F” by Harold Genzmer (composition professor at Munich State Academy) wu played by Rolf Just (recorder) and Wallace Woodley (piano). This was deli-cately-coloured music, with quiet shades of contrast between its movements; music having its own charm, but little affected by experimental trends. Messiaen wu represented by “Canteyodjaya," expertly played by Derek SandersAfter hearing this work (and more—earlier in the year—by this outstandingly important French composer) the listener can appreciate the reasons for his high reputation and his influence on students. After the Messiaen, Mr Sandora played the Nilsson “Quantitaben" again, and thus stimulated an interesting comparison. —V.G.