DUNEDIN SYMPPHONY ORCHESTRA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22246, 26 April 1934, Page 11

DUNEDIN SYMPPHONY ORCHESTRA

The merit of the programmes selected, and the talent employed in their performance have, in the two seasons of its existence, won for the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra a growing and appreciative public. The orchestra has given some fine things in the past, but none more ambitious than the selection for its concert (the second of this season) to be given in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall on Wednesday evening next. It exploits a wide range of music with a distinct loaning to the dramatic. The composers listed are Beethoven, Weber, Tschaikowsky, Wagner, and Puccini, and the compositions range from the fluent, descriptive, and spontaneous lyricism if “ Invitation to the Waltz ” to the sonorous musical heroics of the great German’s “Wo tan’s Farewell " , and “ Siegfried Forging the Sword Nothung.” But the real features of the programme are concentrated in Tschaikowsky’s “ Symphony No. 4 in F Minor,” a magnificent piece of orchestration in which the simple main theme (the homely Russian folktune “ In the Fields There Stood a Birch Tree ”) is elaborated and exalted into a mosaic full of wild grandeur and intricate harmony. The Beethoven selection is the famous “ Coriolanus ” overture. It will open the concert, which will close with excerpts from the highly popular “Madame Butterfly.” The.orchestra has always been happy in its solo collaborators, but never more so than on this occasion. Signora Aida Bulmas. n dramatic soprano of high reputation, who has appeared with success at La Scala (Milan), will sing two numbers, in costume, and with the assistance of the full orchestra. Her first will be Santuzza’s Romanza from “ Cavalleria Rusticana,” and bor second the splendid Ritorna Vineitor from Verdi’s “Aida.” Miss Elvira Wycherley, the other soloist, will play the Bruch transcription for the ’cello of the well-known Jewish melody, “Kol Nidrei.”