ON Saturday, July 19th, the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts start
their eight-weeks run at the Albert Hall. The B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra is bearing the main burden, and plays all through the season, alternating with the London Symphony Orchestra up to August 16th and the London Philharmonic Orchestra after that date.
The Proms. were not designed for the musical connoisseur, and it is a mistake to ask of them what they have never pretended to give. Nevertheless, there will be plenty of people well acquainted generally with the classical repertory who will probably seize the opportunity of repairing odd gaps in their knowledge. Speaking for myself, I am looking forward to making several acquaintances which have somehow escaped me hitherto—not new works, of which I shall speak later, but some of the less frequently performed " classics." On August tzth, for example, there is a Vaughan Williams concert at which you can hear his Benedicite for soprano, chorus and orchestra and his Five Tudor Portraits for contralto, baritone, chorus and orchestra (soloists : Elsie Suddaby, Astra Desmond and Roy Henderson). On August 2ISt Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps is being played, and performances are rare enough to make that still something of an event. On August 27th Kathleen Ferrier is singing Brahms's Alto Rhapsody. On September 9th Louis Kentner is playing Busoni's arrangement of Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody, and on September t3th (the last night of the season) Natasha Litvin is playing Mendelssohn's first pianoforte concerto (in G minor)—two works better known to our parents or grand- parents than to us and well worth reviving.
Most unlikely of the " new " works is an organ concerto by Haydn, which is being played, apparently, for the first time in England on July 23rd by Susi Jeans. Most of the novelties are, very properly, English, and most of the names well known to concert-goers- Eugene Goossens, Gordon Jacob, Anthony Lewis, Elizabeth Lutyens, Alan Rawsthorne, Edmund Rubbra and Victor Hely-Hutchinson. America is represented by Walter Piston and William Schuman, France by Maurice Durufle, Czechoslovakia by Viterslav Novak and the U.S.S.R. by Starokadomsky. A larger proportion than usual of the soloists, too, is British—at least by adoption and grace, if not by birth. Notable exceptions are Jo Vincent and Elizabeth Schumann.
I have very few criticisms. If ProkOfiev is to be represented at all I rather question the Symphonie Classique and Peter and the Wolf as being good choices for a series which is designed to give the average listener a balanced idea of the orchestral repertory. There is very little Berlioz (though Harold in Italy on August 19th ought certainly to have gone down on my list) and Schubert seems under- represented, from the purely musical point of view, with three sym- phonies and nothing else. But songs in the Albert Hall are a farce, I admit, and we are well rid of those " orchestral accompaniments " which are sometimes attempted. No, the planners know their job, and we should be grateful to hear so much music in London at a time
when concert life in most capitals is dead. MARTIN COOPER.
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