CHORAL RECITAL

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 260, 30 July 1937, Page 7

CHORAL RECITAL

Christchurch Harmonic Society To-morrow Night One of the leading features of the most attractive programme to be presented in the Wellington Town Hall to-morrow night by the Christchurch Harmonic Society will be “The Highwayman.” The composer, Armstrong Gibbs, has earued his place in the forefront of contemporary British composers, and in “The Highwayman” he has skilfully caught the atmosphere of Alfred Noyes’s dramatic poem. It is a compact work full of intensity and lasts only twenty minutes. In this respect it is a typical example of the works of the moderns, who, realising that audiences will not concentrate on a work lasting two or more hours, avoid monotonous repetition and wearisome padding. In its directness and virility it is typical of the healthy and robust idiom employed by the present-day school of British composers. The opening phrases, “The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,” at once grip the listener. Clear diction, word stress, and colouring are essential to paint the scene, strong melodic time, aud unusually interesting harmonies are used to portray the entry, “the highwayman canje riding up to the old inn door,” and sparkling accentuation and moving rhythm are employed in “over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn yard.” The music rises to a climax at the words, “her musket shattered the moonlight, shattered her breast in the moonlight,” where Bess, the landlord’s daughter, warns her approaching lover, for whom the soldiers are waiting. With a masterly touch the work ends with the following instructions fro m the composer: “Very little tone and the words almost whispered to get and keep the ghostly effect.” A number of other modern compositions, such as “Rio Grande,” will be presented, together with a selection of classical and humorous items.