MUSIC and RECORDS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 286, 29 August 1931, Page 22

MUSIC and RECORDS

By

C.J.M.

Stray Notes. The Ashburton Choral Society, under Mr. W. H. Dixon, intends putting on “A Tale of Old Japan’’ on October 19. Mr. Gerald Peachell, conductor of the Royal Sydney Philharmonic Society, has resigned and is returning to London, from whence he came about three years ago. The Christchurch Musical Society is at present rehehrsing Gounod’s .“Faust,’’ which will be performed in November. “Judas Maccabaeus” is now under rehearsal by the Dunedin Choral Society for its next concert, after which Weber’s “Der Freischutz” will be performed. , Dressing “Carmen” for the Platform. The Auckland Choral Society’s recent performance of “Carmen” was distinguished by an innovation, namely, an attempt to emphasise the atmosphere of the piece by dressing the singers. The sopranos and contraltos of the chorus wore coloured dresses and wraps, and had the scheme of floodlighting been effective the results no doubt would have been rather striking. The principal, instead of sitting in solemn array, as is the custom in concert hall performances, made their entrances and exits as on the opera stage, and the orchestra was placed down on the floor of the hall. The general result might have been ever better had the men of the chorus, and in the principal cast, added a dash of colour to their .otherwise sombre evening dress attire, but I believe they rather hedged about it when the idea was put to them. Musical people are not very easy to manage. Anyway, one can imagine what it must have looked like to see a gorgeously-arrayed Carmen making love-to an elderly-looking Don Jose in evening 'kit with a- white- waistcoat and a Town Hall concert manner. Thus is bounding idealism wrecked on the realities of the commonplace. The Amateur Musician. . “I think it nothing short of a tragedy that the amateur-musician is seriously on the wane, not only in quantity ‘’but in quality (says Sir Landon Ronald). This has been ascribed, of course, to the enormous vogue of lis-tening-in. I agree only partly to this. Music is no longer performed in the home because people prefer dancing, going to the pictures, playing bridge, and, of course, motoring. “Add to this radio and the gramophone and you will see the reason of the decline of the sale of ‘songs, of pianoforte solos, and the entire absence of any wish to have ‘a little music after dinner.’ When" I was younger a girl would be asked to play the piano or violin and a young man would be asked to sing, after a friendly meal. I do not deny that this could be very boring at times, but one must consider the performer’s point of view. “It must give any and everybody mote pleasure to accomplish something themselves than listening to others doing it, whether it is acting, playing games, or making music. I am told that tennis, cricket, football are as-popular as ever with the amateur; I believe there are more amateur dramatic societies in existence than there have ever been before. Why then has the gentle art of making music either for one’s self or in the drawing-room practically disappeared? . ’

“I can find ,no answer to the question, unless itiis that we hear too much music. If you go to luncli, to dinner, or to supper,'at a restaurant you find a band playing all the time. If you

go down the river you hear on all sides of you gramophones or wireless sets shrieking out the latest horror in jazz. “At the seaside brass bands will play for you from 11 till 1 and 3 till 5 whether you want them or not. I am afraid quite honestly that people are so sick of hearing music all around them, no matter where they go, that once they arrive home they thank God for a respite from something that has become an intolerable nuisance! “And the worst of it is, that all the time they are listening to the wrong kind of music, and it is that very fact which accounts for their tiring of it. The more you hear great music the more you get to love it. Play or sing a composition of, say, Chopin or Schumann a hundred times over, and you will always find something new, something beautiful in it Can anyone honestly say that about the pres-ent-day dance music? “To begin with I can never differentiate one jazz tune from another — whether it is performed by a jazz band or on a gramophone record or on the wireless. It all seems to me to be the same raucous, discordant noise. . Until the mad craze for it has passed and people return to the normal, I fear there is but little hope that we shall see a revival of the amateur performer. It will be a dreadful thing if the people of this country ever descend to becoming solely and wholly ‘listeners-in.’ ” “Timid Flower” of Music. “English music is like the tree which flowers once in a hundred years; but unless the tree were alive there would be no flower, and its life depends, not' only on its intrinsic vitality, but on the soil on which it grows, the rain that falls on it, and the sun which shines on it, the care with which the soil fs <jug and turned, 1 and weeds are got rid of and pestiferous insects warded off,” writes Dr. R. Vaughan Williams, in his introduction to "English Music,” by Sir W. H. Hadow. “The plant of English musical culture is a small and tender growth, for the very reason that those whose business it was to nurture it have failed to do so. Instead they have done their best to stifle it, not necessarily from malice, but because they did not realise its existence. They were looking for flaunting hydrangeas and exotic mimosa, and finding none they there were no flowers to be seen, having failed to notice the modest violets and daisies that were’ hidden in the grass. - “If we want to find the groundwork of our English culture we must look below the surface—not to the grand events chronicled in the newspapers, but to unobtrusive quartet parties which meet week after week to play or sing in their own houses, to the village choral societies whose members trudge miles through rain and snow to work steadily for a concert or competition in some ghastly parish room with, a cracked i piano and a smelly oil lamp, where one week there is" no tenor because at the best there are only two, and one has a cold, and the other, being the village doctor, is always called out at the critical moment ; and there they sit setting their teeth so as to wrench the heart out of this mysterious piece of music which, they are starting to learn for the coming competition. ... • “Our English heritage of music goes quietly on, ignored, stamped on, untended and uncared for; a very Cinderella of the family of arts, but unobtrusively pursuing its way; occasionally when the moment is ripe showing a timid flower, none the less lovely for being , unnoticed by those whose eyes are everywhere but on the ground at their feet.”

RECORDED MUSIC t His Master’s Voice. Willem Mendelberg (the famous conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra) directs the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in a finished performance of Beethoven's First Symphony in O Major, recorded on four records. (H.M.V. D 1867-70). Kreisler has recorded his own arrangement for the violin of “The Midnight Bells” from Heuberger’s operetta, “The Opera Ball.” On the reverse side is the virtuoso’s well-known “The Old Refrain.” (DA1138). The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra has a brilliant recording of “The Gypsy Song” ("Chanson Boheme”), sung by Carmen at the beginning of the second act of Bizet’s “Carmen,” and on the reverse side the beautiful Introduction to the third act of the opera. The Intermezzo is followed by another short fragment played during the change of the guards, “Les Dragons d’Alcala.” (D 1816 A Beethoven violin and piano sonata recording by Fritz Kreisler and Sergei Rachmaninoff is an important event. Here we are given the “Sonata in G Major,” Op. 30, No. 3. The first movement, Allegro Assai, is a spirited motif. The tempo di mlnuetto (second .movement) is full of grace and poetic feeling, while the third allegro vivace is a brilliant finale. (D 8146364). The “Marche Lorraine,” recorded by the Coldstream Guards Band, is an arrangement of one of the old French airs as a song by Louis Ganne. The air was originally a round for dancing, and dates back to the sixteenth century. Always popular in Lorraine,- It was forbidden to be sung by the people after the German occupation of 1870. On the reverse side is the stirring Sousa march, “El Capitan.” (82941). Kipling’s “Danny Deever,” set to music by Walter Damrosch, the wellknown. American conductor and composer, is impressively sung by the Australian baritone, John Brownlee, whose fine voice gives it dramatic emphasis. The companion number is John Ireland’s setting of Masefield’s poem, “Sea Fever.” (E 553 The New Mayfair Orchestra plays a selection from thd musical comedy, “The Love Race,” which may visit New Zealand shortly. This comprises the following musical numbers,' “Spring's in the Air;” “Love Somebody,” “Frivolous Feet," “Take Me With You,” “Don’t You See,” and finale. A selection from “Monte Carlo,” also played by the New Mayfair Orchestra, and containing “Always-.in All Ways,” “Beyond the Blue Horizon," “Give Me a Moment, Please,” and “Whatever It Is," is on the reverse side. (EB61). The recording of Mendelssohn’s Octet by the International Octet, is highly praised by “Discus” of “The Musical Times”:—“Even folk who sniff at the mature Mendelssohn must salute the youth of sixteen-seventeen who could turn out such a piece of chamber music as the Octet—an even greater marvel, I think, than the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ music written a year or two later. Mendelssolmians —there are still plenty and their number Is grow-ing—-should not miss' this fine set of records.” (CIC72-75).

Columbia. The recording of “The Yeomen of tbe Guard” includes every one of the most popular tunes,' and the same brilliant cast of soloists that made “The Mikado” and “The Gondoliers” so successful have contributed to this latest. The singing of Nellie Walker, George Portland, Alice. Lilley, Dan Jones and Appleton Moore in particular is very fine. The six 10-inch dises are in a handsome album, with a booklet of the words. (D 0373-378.

“The Whistling Farmer Boy” and “Golden Friendships," played by the Fillmore Band, are two catchy tunes by Les Fillmore himself. In the “Whistling Farmer Boy” is the barking of a trained dog that punctuates the rhythm in exactly the right places and yet sounds as natural and spontaneous as if its barks were quite a matter of chance. (01358.) “My Hawaiian Song of Love" and “Down in Waikiki” are played by Eddie’s Hawaiian Orchestra. This, one of the most-popular of all steel guitar and ukulele bands, is at its best in this pairing of two successful Hawaiian melodies. (01264.) “From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water” (Cadman), “At Dawning” (Cadman), “Love's Old Sweet Song” (Molloy) are played by Milton Charles on the Wurlitzer. Milton Charles is certainly a “wizard of the Wurlitzer," and his bracket of two of Cadman's most charming tunes on one side of a ten-inch dark-blue disc, with Molloy’s old favourite on the reverse, is most pleasing. (01161.) The “Bedouin Love Song,” with-its alternatively stirring and languorous passages, is and always has been a favourite song with everyone. Sung by such a fine baritone as Fraser Gange, with “Achal by the Sea," a fine song by a well-known Dunedin woman, we have a fine disc. (01064.)

“Lonely Nights in Hawaii" (waltz) and “Honolulu Blues” (foxtrot), played by McElroy’s Spanish Ballroom Band, is a marimba treat. The' marimba, it will be remembered, Is a . Mexican variety of the xylophone, and Its. mellow throbbing has a peculiar Spanish charm about it. (01016.) One of the finest recordings of “Light Cavalry” is a cinema-organ version by Quentin Maclean. Every possible combination of instrumental effects is made use of, and this brilliant player certainly shows what really can be done with the “one-man orchestra." (01007.) The London Novelty Orchestra gives us a recording on Regal of the wellknown “Skaters’ Waltz,” coupled with “Nights of Gladness.” (21049.) . A novelty vocal record, entitled “Jew’s Harp Bill,” has been produced by the Regal Rascals. On the reverse side Mack Allen sings a cheerful little comedy number entitled “For the First Time in Twenty-four Years.” (21044.) Parloplwne.

The music of Rosse’s “Merchant of Venice” is full of elegance and charm. For Parlophone (A 4301-02 the Victor Olof Salon Orchestra has successfully recorded the following numbers from the incidental music: “Preludes Nos. 1 and 2,” the “Portia” Intermezzo, the “March Orientale,” and the “Doge’s March.” Altogether a most pleasing set, well worthy of inclusion In the record libraries of discriminating collectors. .

M. Endreze, baritone, is a newcomer in local gramophony, but is none the worse for that, for he is a very fine singer, to hear whom is to cultivate. He has just recorded for Parlophone “Viola Done la Terrible Cite” (from Massenet’s “Thais”) and “Vision Fugitive” (from the same composer’s “Herodrade"), both very fine numbers (A 4304). ■ v Another acceptable Maori folk-song disc from the well-known Tahiwis—“Kia Koutou” and “Hine-Kura” (A 3200). These are Australian (Parlophone recordings, and as good as previous recording? from these artists. Two hits from Erik Charell’s “The White Horse Inn” have been recorded by the Barnabas von Geczy Orchestra (Parlophone A 3198). These are “My Song of Love" (waltz) and , “The White Horse Inn." Nevin’s popular “The Rosary” and Yradler’s lilting “La Paloma” have been admirably recorded by the Bohemian Gipsy Orchestra for Parlophone (A 3202 Brunswick and Panachord. . Among new Panachord records are “By and By" and “Leave It There,” vocal duets with guitar, violin, and piano; “What are They Doing in Heaven To-day” and “One Night as I Lay Dreaming.” (12038.) A song of the moment, “I Bring a Love Song,” is sung by Willie Robyn, tenor. (Panachord 12084. )V “That Little Boy of Mine” is a foxtrot by Will Osborne’s Orchestra. (12118) “Would You Like to Take a Walk?” is a vocal duet with guitar and trombone by the Panachord Boys. (12103.) The Regent Club Orchestra has recorded “Broken-Hearted” Waltz with vocal chorus, coupled with “One Little Raindrop” by Bernie’s Orchestra. (Bru’ns'wick 6062.) The latter is also responsible for the foxtrot with vocal chorus “I Have to Laugh,” coupled with “Things I Never Knew Till Now.' (60G8.) A'good whistling record with orchestra is Brunswick 6054 (“Spring Song” (Mendelssohn) and “Call of the Angelus” (Walton), by Margaret McKee. “Blue Again” (“Red”Nicholls Orchestra), coupled with “Chimes of Spring” Waltz (Bob Haring’s Orchestra), is a good disc. (6014.)