SCHOOLS’ FESTIVAL

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 16

SCHOOLS’ FESTIVAL

Great Deal To Commend Christchurch Primary Schools’ Music Festival. Participating schools: Linwood North, Burwood, Linwood Intermediate, North New Brighton, Kendal, Spreydon, Linwood Avenue, Riccarton, and Templeton. Civic Theatre, 7.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. In a programme that ranged widely among the repertoire of unison songs and evidenced the diversity of instrumental activity in the contributing schools there was much to commend in the second evening of the festival. The singing and playing were, on the whole, wellprepared and some of the items attracted attention because they were refreshingly different. The “Ballad of Captain Cook” struck an appropriate note among the massed choral items which were performed under Mr Keith Newson’s experienced baton.

For all their good work the separate choirs frequently showed signs of rhythmless singing. One sympathises with conductors who have to cope with the “weightlessness” of the untrained treble voice. It is like playing cricket with a shuttlecock. The only solution is to caricature the stresses and exaggerate the accentuation until control is achieved and then to aim at a positive and artistically organised “onwardness.” Rhythmic vitality illuminates the musical and the verbal message. A feature of this programme was the large number of compositions and arrangements by local composers. —J.A.R.