Page 5 Advertisements Column 1

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 6052, 9 November 1906, Page 5

A young Australian actress. Miss Olive Palmer, daughter of that sterling old Melbourne favourite, Mr Edwin Palmer, has just concluded a long engagement with Mrs Langtrey, and has been offered a renewal for America. Messrs fireitkopf and Hartel publish not only the piano scores of Mr Granville Bantock’a "Omar Khayyam" and Mr Joseph Holbrooke’s “The Bells” (which are both to be produced at the Birmingham Festival) but also elaborate analyses of them by Mr Ernest Newman. From these it appears that Mr Bantock’s work is but the first part of a biology covering only the. first 54 quatrains of the book. He has imagined three personages—The Poet, the Beloved, and the Philosopher, besides the chorus to which the specifically reflective and didactic passages are assigned. Mr Bantock suggests a novel arrangement of the orchestra in that he directs a complete body of strings to be placed on either side of the cojßuctor. The division of the chorus into two, which follows as a corollary, is, of course, not novel. Mr Wood has all hie violins on one side and his violas on tho other, but that is ns far as anybody has gone. Mr Holbrooke (please note the final e. because Mr Holbrooke threatens with fire and sword any one who dares to omit it) finished his setting of “The Beils” some three years ago, but it is on such an elaborate scale that it can only be produced at a great festival. He. too, has special directions. Ho wants the auditorium to bo in darkness, as in Wagnerian opera. The extra instruments, he requires are a contrabass tuba, a euphonium, a stier horn, large cymbals, a large gong, a small gong, a xylophone, tubular bells and four mushroom bells, a hand bell, largo jingles, small jingles, a soprano concertina, two grand pianos, and a celesta. The most daring of them is the concertina, but Mr Holbrooke has been anticipated by Tchaikovsky. A study of tho piano scores of both works leads to the conviction that each will enhance its com-1 poser’s reputation.—“ Morning Leader.” I