MUSIC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22723, 8 November 1935, Page 5

MUSIC

NOTES AND RECORDS

By Allegro.

The Dunedin Symphony Orchestra’s next concert' will take place on November 20. The overture will be the “ Mastersingers,” Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony will be the big work, and Grieg’s piano concerto will be given with Miss Muriel Ironside as pianist. Selections from Gounod’s “ Faust ” are also on the programme. The Dunedin Orchestral Society’s concert is pencilled for early December. The Percy Grainger “ Spoon River ” which we heard recently will be given again. Vaughan Williams’s “ Folk Song Suite,” the “ Rosamunde ” overture, and Grieg’s march from “ Sigurd Jprsalfur ” are some of the smaller works which will bo heard. It is hoped that Mrs H. C. Campbell will be the soloist for “Spoon River” and for the last movement of the Saint-Saens “ Concerto in D minor,” and also that the last movement of the Brahms G minor piano quartet will be played by Mr Scherck and Misses Wallace, Rattigan and Wycherley.

The Junior Orchestra programme on Wednesday included the following works: “ Idomeneus ” overture by Mozart, “ Coppellia Ballet ” music by Delibes, “ Minuet ” from Beethoven’s “ Sonata in G,” grand march from “ Tannhauser,” “ Military Polonaise ” by Chopin, and lighter numbers. The Students’ Orchestral Club will give its final concert for this season on November 14. Its programme includes the “Magic Flute” overture, a movement from one of Haydn’s “ London Symphonies,” “ Coppelia ” ballet music, three Russian compositions, “Humoresque ” ,by Dvorak, and “ Minuet ” by Boccherini. The soloists will be Mjss Thelma Gcmmel and Mr Frank Cawley, two members of the Clavier Club who will be hoard in a two-piano suite by “Arensky,” and Miss Macdonald and Mr Macdonald vocal soloists. The Returned Soldiers’ Choir proj gramme for the final concert of the 1035 season will contain many interesting features. The visiting artist will be Miss Chrissio Talbot, coloratura soprano, who created a sensation in Wellington during the Dominion aria contest. Miss Talbot will sing a bracket consisting of “ Shepherd Thy Demeanor Vary ” by Lane Wilson, Granville Bantock’s “ Home Thoughts,” and “ Song of the Open ” by Frank La Forge. In the second part of the programme Miss Talbot will sing from “ Lakmc,” “ The Indian Bell Song.” Mrs H- C. Campbell, Misses Ethel Wallace, Ngaio Garland, Lillian Rattigan, and Elvira Wycherley will play the scherzo and finale from Dvorak’s piano quintet. “ The Song of Harold Harfager ” for choir and baritone soloist (Mr R. Duerdon) will be accompanied by full orchestra. Other items by the choir will be a canzonetta from the Spanish “ Dedication” (Franz), “The Blacksmith” (Brahms), both being new numbers, solos and chorus from “ The Yeoman of the Guard ” with Miss R. Sell singing Dame Carruthers’s solo, a nocturne, and lighter songs. The finale will be a cheerful excerpt from the “ Rebel Maid.” The choir soloist will be Mr W. N. Satterthwaite. “Much of the unmusical playing one hears from children is brought about by teachers trying to make them jjroduce extreme forte tone, which is impossible for them to attain by legitimate means, and by unwisely urging them to play at a speed which is disastrous for good tone, evenness, and rhythmical clearness.' Every tone must be musical is the high ideal that a teacher must inculcate in the child mind from the initial stage.” This was the wise saying of an examiner at present in New Zealand. The writer recently heard a music teacher lamenting the fact that the parents of a child complained that he “ could not play anything quickly.” It appeared upon inquiry . that the parents encouraged the child to rush through scales and “ hurry up ” his music during the practice hour. This, of course, was causing stumbling and lack of finger and hand control. The pieces had naturally “ run away ” from the young player. The old rule of “ slow and soft practice ” with an occasiona l exhilarating run through or a gradual quickening up of the speed of quick movements is a very good rule indeed. This had been explained to the parents and child, and the improvement (under the now watchful and wiser mother) in two weeks had rewarded both teacher and child.

A few weeks ago the city of St. Kilda (Victoria) had the effrontery to advertise for an “ honorary city organist.” The notice was not issued over the name of an “ honorary town clerk,” and a correspondent promptly wrote to the Argus inquiring whether the St. Kilda City Council asked its gardeners or ofiice staff i work under similar conditions to those under which the poor, hapless (and penniless) organist was being invited to perform. Docs the council consider (continued this relentless questioner) that a musician lives in some mysterious way upon air? Mr St. John Erviue has been writing in an English paper concerning the widespread delusion that authors are wallowing in wealth. Dr Floyd, in the Australasian, writes: One sometimes encounters a similar delusion with regard to cathedral organists. A few quite plain facts may serve ns a corrective. An eminent musician, who had every reason for knowing what he was talking about, told me not long ago that he knew for an absolute fact that during all his 43 years as organist of Westminster Abbey Sir Frederick Bridge was never paid a penny more than £3OO a year. The distinguished organists of the cathedrals at Oxford and Norwich receive the munificent salary of £4OO per annum. This is for a solid 12 months’ work. Each of the six residentiary canons at Oxford gets £I2OO to £ISOO, and is only on duty for two months in the year. The unfortunate canons of Norwich have to struggle along on £9OO each; moreover, each of them has to be in residence for no fewer than four months in every 12. A Polish friend (writes a London critic) said: “Up in the mountains above Zakopane you will find a musical instrument.in use like none I, for one, have ever seen or heard elsewhere. I believe it is a speciality of our Polish mountaineers.” But music, and folkmusic in particular, was not my friend’s subject. The peculiar instrument of the highlanders of the' Tatry turned out to be a bagpipe. There was no difficulty in coming across a Tatra piper. As in Switzerland one finds executants on the Alpine horn stationed on fine days on frequented passes. His instrument had two drones (tonic and dominant) and a chanter with six finger holes. It was thus a less elaborate instrument than the Scottish bagpipe; it was also less domineering and fierce in effect. Mazurkas wore not to be expected in the Polish mountains. The mazurka (which is more properly “mazurek”) belongs to Masovia, in the central Polish plain. The krakowiak is the dance proper to Western Galicia, and krakowiaks were what Stanislaw Mroz played to the passer-by—only, in the absence of dancers, rhythmically altered, the tautness of the krakowiak’s two-four time being much relaxed as he ambled up and down his simple scale. In Polish the bagpipes are “ dudy,” and in Czech the word is almost the same. The player is “ dudziarz.” When we remember that the Germans call the bagpipe “ Dudolsack,” it suggests (the London critic writes) that they may originally have regarded it as a Slavonic instrument. especially since “ dudeln,” to play the bagpipe, also in German, means to make very inferior music, and the Germans have always been supercilious towards their Slavonic neighbours.

But this (the critic continues) is to venture on uncertain ground. Did not the late Dr Grattan Flood write a book to persuade the world —including not only Scotland, but also Galicia in Spain and Calabria in Italy, where also the bagpipe is the national instrument—that the instrument was really the invention of the Irish, and only spread to the rest of Europe through the Roman army, who took a fancy to it at the conquest of Britain? An opportunity occurred in Zakopane of seeing some dancing by Polish mountaineers. The music was played by a couple of violins and a vamping ’cello. Here was the spirited, cheerful krakowiak, and Goralski (i.c., Mountain Dance, from “ gora,” a mountain), dances that would have seemed perfectly at home in the land of the reel and Highland fling. The tunes, truth to say, were less engaging than the dancing'itself, which was dashingly energetic and precise. All the tunes were in duple time, and were melodically elementary. One remembered that Paderewski in his “Tatra Album” of Polish dances and songs did not quite succeed in doing for the krakowiak what Chopin had done for the mazurka, 1