Enjoyable concert for children

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33446, 30 January 1974, Page 18

Enjoyable concert for children

Commonwealth Games Children’s Programme. A Youth Concert of poetry and music. January 29 and 30 at 9 a.m. in the Limes Room of the Town Hall. Although the young, and : occasionally restless, audience could well have done (with some involvement in the proceedings to keep up 'their flagging interest, the Youth Concert of poetry and music provided an enjoyable morning’s entertainment

Kirsty Cochrane is to be applauded for her excellent choice of programme. It is to be hoped she will be rewarded with an even larger audience for the second performance this morning. More emphasis, however, should have been placed on the age level for which the programme was designed, as a number of children were obviously far too young to appreciate the concert to the full. The programme is really suitable only for children aged 12 years and over. The instrumental items i were of an increasingly high; standard, reaching a” peak: with a movement from Haydn’s Quartet in C major, played by Edward Barry and Catherine Donaldson ' (violins), Faith Austin (viola) and Douglas Peterson (cello); and Keith Spragg’s precise; playing of the third of Three 1 Pieces by Stravinsky.

Keith Lewis’ singing of A. E. Housman’s lyric “On Wenlock Edge,” with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and some of the performances by the Villa Maria i Recorder Consort, were also highly commendable. The life and vitality of the concert was provided more by the poetry readings than the music which, by comparison, lacked lightness and a sense of humour, both necessary components in a (concert for children, no matter what the age. The readers, Mervyn Thompson, Allanah O’Sullivan, Wayne Bell and Nick Blake, from Court Theatre, and Jackie Cook from the University of Canterbury English department, took a variety of poems, serious and humourous, and infused them (with vitality and interest. Particularly well done 1 were Rosemary Sutcliffe’s tale of Apollo and Hyacinthus, read by Mervyn Thompson, Wayne Bell and (Nick Blake: Jackie Cook’s reading of "A Warning,” by Jenny Joseph; and W. M. Thackeray’s “Little Billie” and James Reeves’ “Cows,” both read by Allanah O’Sullivan, . Nick Blake, Wayne Bell and Mervyn Thompson. Les Cleveland and several younger readers also took part in the concert.—F.P. i