Music Was a Feature Of Our Centennial Year

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26958, 18 December 1948, Page 9

Music Was a Feature Of Our Centennial Year

For the Daily Times, by M.M.

For those who love the glamour of the theatre or the milder intoxication of the concert hall, the centennial year has been a colorful and eventful season with few parallels in our history.

In the full glare of the footlighl ballet and musical comedy, and, i: concert hall, some world-famous art

ts we have seen real drama, opera, in the more subdued light of the tists.

The bill of fare has ranged from caviar to candy, with a generous supply of more wholesome inbetweens. At one end, chamber music for the connoisseur, and at the other, musical comedy for those who like a catchy tune. A few visiting celebrities do not make a brilliant season any more than a few swallows make a summer. But add to Isobel Baillie, Moura Lymnany, Moisewitsch, and Richard Farrell the Ballet Rambert, the Old Vic Players, the Queensland Quartet, and a performance of the B minor Mass, and you have a vintage year. We could, of course, complain that we heard very little of our National Orchestra, that the concerts of the festival week were frankly disappointing, or that Isobel Baillie was not heard in a complete recital, but we had about as much as we could take. Standards

dominating stage personality. Arthur Servent’s voice was inadequate, but, in spite of this, he was responsible for the high emotional tension of the third act, which sent the audience home more impressed with the tragedy of his unrequited love than with the unhappy fate of Carmen herself. Singers The singers formed an ill-sorted group, to name all of whom together in one sentence would be sacrilegious. Isobel Baillie combined a voice of purest quality with flawless technique and sang airs by Bach, Handel, Mozart and Arne as we have never heard them before. In spite of an excellent voice, Miklos Gafni was unable to maintain the interest of an audience throughout a whole recital. The young Australian baritone, John Cameron, had a rich voice and good stage Eresence. We expect to hear more of im in the future. Of Danny Morgan we could say quite a lot. He filled two-thirds of the programme with intervals, and in the other third filled his audience with amazement. The music went round and round in the sense that songs from the first half cropped up again in the second half. Only those who remained to the bitter end knew of this. Pianists More uniformly good were the three pianists. It was small wonder if Moiseivitsch, the veteran of many seasons, played the Waldstein or the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue for the 500th time in a somewhat detached manner. Even so, he could not disguise for long his deep interest in music and in drawing from the piano a thousand sonorities and brilliant effects of which he alone is master. Moura Lympany, though still young, had authority and an air of distinction in her playing. She was .brilliant, but not sensational, and interpreted all the composers she played with more or less equal understanding. • Richard Farrell, young, very talented, courageous, is bound to make a stir in the musical world before he is much older. Chamber Music The one concert by the Queensland State Quartet was a gala night for music students and the more discriminating of music lovers. It is 12 years since a string quartet was heard here, so it could not be easily decided whether it compared favourably with other quartets, but the audience responded with a warmth quite rare in Dunedin. There will be more chamber music in Dunedin next season, which should fill a long-left want. Criticism The correspondence columns of this newspaper have been kept busy this year with letters mildly abusive of the critic. It is a healthy sign of interest, though not necessarily of interest in music itself, but in the people who perform it. Any critic worth taking seriously is concerned only with the quality of the performance. His concern is not for the reputation of musicians, but for the honour of the composer, who can only be rightly interpreted when performers have sufficient talent and technique to do so. Good criticism sets standards, and a critic worthy of the name is prepared to be stoned by public opinion to raise the standard.

Events like the Boyd Neel Orchestra, the Old Vic plays, and the Ballet Rambert have brought us new standards in art. It has been suggested that the repertory theatre in New Zealand has been discouraged by the inevitable comparison with Old Vic performances. And so it should be; hut the natural outcome of higher standards should be a Metermination to improve, not to give up trying.

Before Isobel Baillie came, we might have thought that “just” intonation was theoretically possible but practically never attained. Now we know that exact pitch is exciting and satisfying. It becomes the prime condition of quality in a musical sound; and the cultivated wobble of many otherwise good singers becomes less tolerable Some misguided enthusiasts with no standards of comparison have overpraised our National Orchestra and asked us to believe that it was already In world class. When we heard the precision, brilliant tone and finished interpretations of the Boyd Neel strings we knew better how to judge for ourselves.

-In amateur circles, the fine singing of the Christchurch Harmonic Society in the B minor Mass set a higher standard in choral singing, and the S' ion is being asked wnat we are to improve our own choirs. Festival Week Memories of the festival week are more grave than gay. It certainly gave us little cause for civic pride, but some events are worth recalling such as: a creditable performance by the orchestra of Dvorak’s Fourth Symphony: Mary Pratt’s fine singing in the Brahms Alto Rhapsody (also a first performance for Dunedin audience)- Alfred Walmsley’s treatment of the tenor role in the Hymn of Praise. Of less fragrant memory was the dreary trek for performers and audience alike across an interminable musical waste aptly called “ The Desert,” the futile expenditure .of good musicianship and a fine voice when Bryan Drake was expected to be heard in “ Songs of the Fleet ’ against a large and hearty male chorus and unrestrained full orchestra; the humorously faulty intonation of a good trumpeter in his repartee f with Isobel Baillie in 14 Let the bright seraphim and the dullness of Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise, which was not improved by playing .he whole of the three-movement orchestral introduction, the fault this time being in the composer.

New Zealanders have an appetite for sugary superlatives. Robust analysis of any kind instantly rouses hostility. If New Zealanders took the trouble to read overseas newspapers they would see how tenderly their most severe New Zealand critics treat their victims. I append two quotations for comparison. Geoffrey Shaw, a wellknown English critic, writes: “ I was infuriated to hear Albert Wolff wasting his time directing the BBC Or* chestra in playing Carnival Roumain.” M. M. in the Otago Daily Times says: "The orchestra’s fondness for this show piece of Berlioz (Carnival Roumain) seems disproportionate -to its merit.”

“ Carmen ” On the whole, “ Carmen ” was a good thing The cast was an odd mixture of amateur and professional forces which included one good actor without a voice and some good singers with no experience and little aptitude for stage work. The season began without adequate rehearsal with the principals and orchestra; yet it was good entertainment and a suitable initiation for young New Zealand into the mysteries of opera. We discovered that our own singers compared vocally more than favourably with the visiting artists, but that stage technique was of greater importance. On the concert platform Janet Howe was less impressive than a dozen singers we could produce; but as Carmen she was a brilliant and

I would like to pay a tribute to many writers who quite ably defended the principles of criticism and in so doing have given moral support to all critics in our midst.