CHOIR OF 3500.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15309, 9 August 1923, Page 8

CHOIR OF 3500.

!■- ■■ j HANDELV FESTIVAL: ' '/-MIGHTY SINGING.'.' ' AT CRYSTAL PALACE. To judge by the singing of the choir of 3500 and, by the size of the audience at the full-dress rehearsal on Saturday at the , Crystal Palace, the Handel Festival this week is going to be successful (says the London Times of recent date). Pieces from some 'IS of the master's works were performed . in the Hanilel Chorus's own particular arena —the central transept of the palace, which- is hardly more of a concertroom .than is Trafalgar Square! ; Sir Frederick Cowen conducted these multitudinous performers—so far spreading an army that 'when he got unanimous effects from them it looked miraculous. Again the tenors and basses are the extreme left and right wings of this choral army, "separated by all the women singers': One of the most ■ curious-effects at the Handel Festival is when across that great distance basses;, give back the answer to the tenors' announcement an some fugal movement. It suggests Romans and- - Tuscans exchanging battle cries", across the Tiber's flood, if not a-challenge from Cader Idris to Snowdon.

After all there is one principal justification of the Handel Festival, and that is that; Handel does really, come out so sprprisingly well from this treatment which he- never could have foreseen. A musical, generation has arisen that knows and cares little about Handel. "The-Messiah," of course, is sung all over the country as a sort of rite,,but what of the rest of Handel? Deep in dust. So it was very well for all to be reminded on Saturday—by a long series of monumental choral movements, in that great ■ reasonable Renaissance style that has simply never been rivalled for the expression of solemn, sturdy, sensible, constitutional public feeling in music—what a tremendous fellow Handel was.

The "monster" conditions of the Handel Festival, assuredly wrong in many ways, are splendidly right in that they allow to such vast numbers the pleasure of taking part. This festival is the chorus's festival, and the audiences are mere supernumeraries. The vast audience on Saturday were certainly enjoying themselves, but their enjoyment' was only a pale and moonlike reflection of the roaring fun that a singer in such a chorus must know.

, The "Israel In Egypt" choruses sounded wonderful —it was like the raising of the voice of a whole nation; On the other hand that charming pastoral "Acis and Galatea" was as out of place as a pink necktie on the Sphinx. And it was queer and sad to hear Mr Ben Davies (a veteran of the festival, warmly welcomed back) trying to be delicate and at the same time universally comprehended by a multitude that stretched as far as the eye could see, in declaring how "Love in her eyes sits playing, and sheds delicious death." Mr Norman Allin, among the soloists, worked superhumanly, and Miss Florence Austral (an Australian) also was admirable in a charming air from "Rodelinda." But the solo singing inevitably shows up the wrong proportions of the forces of the Handel Festival.