RETURNED SOLDIERS’ CHOIR

Evening Star, Issue 19019, 14 August 1925, Page 3

RETURNED SOLDIERS’ CHOIR

k AMERICAN NAVAL BAND A full house at His Majesty’s Theatre on Wednesday night, the occasion being the second concert for the season ol the ! Dunedin Returned Soldiers’ Choir. 1 A hundred or njoro men from the ' United States war vessels attended as guests, and were welcomed by Mr P. 1 8 Anderson (chairman of committee) i on behalf of the choir. The Americans, • Mr Anderson remarked, are the other 1 half of the English-speaking race—chips ! of the old block—and for that reason ■ were welcome. The choirmen, being returned soldiers, had a welcome for ! the Americana on that account, lor 1 “ our boys ” did not forget the hospi- ■ iality shown to them at Panama and Newport News and other places on the. 1 voyages back to New Zealand. Thirty-seven was the singing strength of the choir at this concert. Air W. ■ ' Paget Gale, the conductor, had the. voices well under control all through. : The National Anthem went very well. The choir has now got_ the prayerful spirit which is the principle introduced : by Mr Gale in his arrangement of the tune. ‘ The Soldiers’ Chorus,’ also, tame forth satisfactorily, perhaps a little lighter than usual, but with the ! tenor buoyant and keeping the pitch, the bass firm, and the words perfectly | uttered. The ‘ Thuringian Volkslied ’ ■ was beautifully sung—unaccompanied of course—with a nice combination_ of , airiness and earnestness, the expression tasteful, the tone really good. ‘ The Beleaguered ’ was noticeable on aocount of the excellent singing of both tenor parts, the embellishments particularly graceful; but the ending of this part song was rather tamo. ‘ The Owl and the Pussy Cat ’ went fairly well as a matter of reading, but it needed more j“go.” In ‘The Battle Resounds from , i Afar ’ the parts were well held and the I choir as a whole sang wuth the required . ; brightness. Bad luck attended the clc-: 1 livery of ‘ The Songs of the Fleet.’ Mr ; Gcmmell’s throat was affected by a i cold; therefore lie could not take the 'sdo. Mr Satterthwaito undertook the duty at short notice, and got the solo in all right, but a light tenor cannot do the work of a rdbust baritone, and, as the choir quite properly pulled off the weight so ns to make proportion, the result was to shear out the breezines.s which is characteristic of Stanford’s noble composition. In the circumstances Mr Satterthwaite and the choir—Mr Gale as _well —deserve credit for the measure of success achieved. . i ‘Rolling Down to Rio ’ was the Inst of i the part songs, and it made its mark, i Of the soloists, Miss Alice Wilkinson let the best of her voice Die upper register be heard in ‘ Ho Ye War- 1 nors ’ and displayed excellent form in one of her encore songs, ‘ Sing, Sweet Blackbird.’ Mr being I I called on to do the solo in the big part i jeong, wiselv dropped ‘Moira My Girl’ | ' and sang a Miniature ’ just as a j love song ought to be snug. Mr G. An-1 sell’s bass voice and rollicking style pleased ’the audience, and his rendering ' of ‘ Sailing in the Piping Breeze ’ produced a double encore. Messrs A. j ! Parker and P. S. Anderson gave the duet ‘ Poet and Peasant ’ in an acceptable manner. Mr M.. Brunette’s clean and straightforward clarinet playing formed another enjoyable contribution j to the concert. I Mr L. James played all the pianoforte accompaniments in a careful manner. The surprise of flic evening was supplied by the hand from the American 1 v. are-hip' Melville. The programme sim-1 ply announced “items by concert party of American fleet.” Had the public * realised what a treat was in store they ; would have rushed the concert in oven I greater numbers. The band is wnat is j known as a military band—that is, a j cnnbinition of reeds and brass, like our j First .Battalion Band—and it numbers ‘twenty-four players, including tour ti umpets, three trombones, and a saxophone, with very skilful soloists on (Into, trombone, B flat_ bass, and bass drum, and able to give a love!)' lead from the trumpets. The playing ’seems to he influenced by the style set by John Philip Sousa, whoso band came to Dunedin fourteen years ago; that, is to say, ft is characterised by brilliance of tone and by lovely precision in fast staccato. Air Binn Mills, the conductor, can get effects like the crack of a whip. The first piece played was the popular mareli ' The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ An undeniable encore was answered by something oi the jazz order, and a second encore resulted in the delivery of sonic opera excerpts in which the tenor solo from ‘ Aida ’ was identified. On its next appearance Mr Mills and his party gave a medley enI titled ‘ The Flail of Fa mo,’ introducing amongst other things Dvorak’s humoresque and Rubinstein’s ‘ Melody in I'V ■No fewer than four encores resulted, I and one of the replies was a develop--1 ment of a fox trot that was composed by Air Sidney Hawes, an Otago medical student. The band got a great reception, and before leaving the choir expressed its sincere thanks for the friendly visit.