HARMONIC SOCIETY

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 145, 22 June 1938, Page 8

HARMONIC SOCIETY

A DIVERSIFIED PROGRAMME

A promising beginning of its new season was made by the ■Wemngton Harmonic Society last evening. K future programmes attain the mgn standard then set up the members active and passive, should be gratified with the artistic and financial results. The programme was well diversified, including madrigal and part song, glee and choms, and in between solo numbers for the violin and ,„ The conductor was Mr. H. Temple W A four-part song, "Vagabonds" (Eaton Faning), proved an auspicious opening, being of strolling players and the parts they play. Farce, comedy, and tragedy, of their willingness to please; and the carefree life they lead. The song was given with zest and insight into its character, and the well-balanced choir responded with alacrity and understanding to Mr. Temple White's demands. Not only in this, the opening number, but in every other-choral item in the programme (and some of them were far from easy to sing) the choir as a whole, or in part, for instance, in "Sound Sleep" (Vaughan Williams) for women's voices, acquitted itself with distinction, sometimes obtaining delicate nuances of expression—notably in "The Blue Bird" (Villers Stanford) and "How Beautiful This Night" (Percy E. Fletcher), a'setting of words of Shelley. Observance of time and fine gradations of light and shade were pronounced features of the concert so far as,the choir was concerned. Exceedingly beautiful was the singing of "Evening Scene" (Elgar); the words being-by Coventry Patmore and taken from his poem "The River."

A truly Celtic flavour was imparted to "The Death of Morar," a Highland lament with its keening and, wailing, its dirgelike character relieved by passionate outbursts of fealty to the dead chief. ■'■■■

; Delicacy was,the main feature in the isinging of '-The Faery Chorus" (Rutland Barrington), and humour was furnished in the presentation ' of "The Bells of St. Michael's"' glee with remarkably clever imitations of the vibrations of deep-toned bells. A spirited rendering, from pianissimo to 'forte and then fading away to a whisper, was the march song "The Campibells Are Coming." V

1 A star performer at the concert was the infant prodigy Alan Loveday. He .was ;announeed»as aged 9, and did not ilook a day older: Without a trace of diffidence he came on to the platform, his fiddle looking extraordinarily large compared with his small stature. He played with ' all the assurance of the virtuoso Kreisler's "Tambourin Chinois," and that great violinist's arrangement of a Mozart Rondo with its imposing and difficult cadenza, and the boy played them exceedingly well, with a fine if not robust tone, and with no apparent fear of great technical difficulties. He proved himself a wonder child, not so much by how well he played his pieces, but that he should have attempted to play them at all. He is one of those mysteries of genius, for which psychologists have yet to give a convincing explanation. , Mr. W. Dearden-Jackson as solo

pianist greatly pleased in his perform; ance of two of Chopin's Preludes (C Sharp and G Minor), and, as an encore, a Prelude in B Minor. He also gave a romantic rendering of La Cathedrale Engloutie" and the Prelude in whole tones of Debussy, and later in the evening Dohnanyi's "Ruralia Hungarica," a delightful arrangement of a folk song like that other folk song "The Keel Row," and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11. The accompanist was Mrs. R. G. Caigou, who contributed much to the success of the concert and the pleasure of the audience.