MUSIC
THE Promenade Concerts, which start on July z3rd, were not designed for the jaded palate of the musical connoisseur. Their aim is to introduce a maximum number of those who, for one reason or another, go to few other concerts during the rest of the year to a maximum number of the accepted—and in that sense classical— works of the ordinary concert repertory. This plain and wholesome diet is enlivened, or at any rate varied, by the inclusion of a small number of strictly contemporary works, some of them wholly new and others new to London, and for the most part by our own British composers.
This year, of the ten novelties, all but three are British, and this probably represents the highest proportion of native as against foreign that the Proms. have ever offered. The reason for this may be purely musical ; but it is interesting to see that, with the pathetic farce of Russian friendship at last abandoned, there are no Russian works and none even from the " People's Democracies " where Russian aesthetic principles are accepted. From the purely artistic point of view this is almost certainly justified ; but at a time when Alexander Werth's Musical Uproar in Moscow has aroused general interest in the state of Soviet music, it would have been informative to have included one example of the State-approved music. All art should be judged on its merits as art, not on its place of origin or the theories according to which it has been created. The Prom. audiences arc not very discriminating, but they should be given a chance to hear and judge the sort of music that is sponsored by a State which has not yet wholly lost—for many young and generous minds—its reputation as the artists' Utopia. It is possible that Alan Bush's violin concerto (August 25th) will give us an idea of the Russian ideal, since the composer is an enthusiastic devotee of Russian theories, political and aesthetic ; but without the Party imprimatur we cannot be sure.
The two most interesting programmes of the series to me are on August t ith, when Alan Rawsthorne's new concerto for string orchestra will have its first performance, and on September 6th, when Bloch will conduct the first London performance of his Con- certo Symphonique for piano (Corinne Lacomble) and orchestra. Honegger's Symphonic Liturgique was played at Edinburgh last year, but is new to London and almost certainly worth hearing on August 26th. Lennox Berkeley's new choral work, Col onus' Praise, is based on a poem from Yeats' The Tower, and it will be interesting to see how it is handled by a composer who has hitherto been most successful in purely instrumental music (September i ith). Richard
Strauss' duct concertino for clarinet, bassoon, string orchestra and harp on July 29th will certainly be masterly and delight all those who enjoy the sound of a consummate musical craftsman moving at ease among the shadows and echoes of his own past. Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms on August 23rd will probably be new to most of the Prom. audience, and is an excellent addition to the Firebird Suite which has hitherto been the composer's sole representative at the Proms The John Ireland seventieth anniversary concert on September loth is spiced by the fact that The Forgotten Rite, which is included in the programme, has recently had a great success at Kuibyshev, so that we shall have an idea of what Russian Audiences do in fact enjoy, even though we have no example of what their masters consider suitable for them. No Mozart-lover should miss the Masonic' Funeral Music on September 12th. MARTIN COOPER.
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