MUSIC NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1408, 19 April 1917, Page 34

MUSIC NOTES.

(By

“G” String.)

The late Sir Joseph Beecham was a very fine musician, and intensely anxious to enable others to enjoy good music. On one occas'on he said to a friend: “My income is so and so; my family can live on so much.

On what can I spend the rema.nder

better or more profitably than ,n giving the same pleasure to thousands that I derive from glorious music?” Anonymously, in 1909, he stated that he was wilLng to devote £300,000 to furthering the cause of nat-onal opera. So while for a generation or sb discuss ons had taken place as to how opera could be pro moted in Great Br tain, he stepped in and to a large extent solved the problem—at least temporarily. No doubt it has always been a quest.on of expenditure, but this does not lessen the credit due to the late Sir Joseph Beecham for the generosity of his achievement. He has set a ball rolling that not even the war has stayed, and it may be hoped that in the near future national opera m Great Br tain will be firmly' established.

One of the principal numbers on the programme of the January series of the Queen’s Symphony Concerts, which are conducted in London by Sir Henry Wood, was the orchestral suite based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Legend of Tsar Saltan.” It was performed for the first time in England. The opera was first produced in Moscow in 1906, and illustrates an old folk tale in which Tsar Saltan appoints two jealous sisters as guard ans of his wife, Militrissa, whilst he is at the wars. They write telling him that his wife’s newborn child is a monstrosity, whereupon he orders mother and child to be sent adrift on the sea in a cask. By chance they are cast upon an island, where the little prince grows to manhood, and rescues a princess whose magic spells raise a marvellous c ty from the depths of the sea. All this on an island where the squirrels crack golden nuts, out of which fall emeralds! In his suite RimskyKorsakov mus.cally epitomises the story in three movements. The first, dealing with the Tsar’s departure is in march-rhythm, and is engagingly melodious; the second suggests the surging of the sea during the risky voyage, and the th rd alludes to the enchanted island with a dainty theme with harp and wood-wind gracefully prominent, typifying the beauty of the princess.