Ballet can have its own logic, but within those terms

it cannot stretch our credibility too far. Strangely enough we can, it seems, accept a water-nymph for real, but once she is accepted our minds would baulk at the idea of her ever flying. This perhaps explains the strange incon- sistency that is to be found in our approach to the so-called ballet classics. The story can be as fantastical as a baroque tea-cosy, but some in- tellectual awareness demands that it should be related logically.

In Ondine Ashton plays quite fairly by the rule-book, but his concentration on the title-role has certainly left the rest of the ballet in a strangely sketchy condition. What is a dancer to make of the tergiversations of Ondine's mortal rival, Berta? And how can anyone give life to that dull stick of ballet hero, the tedious Palemon? Ashton has left these two as little more than skeletons- to be used as pegs in the story, around which Ondine gracefully darts. The time has surely come when, if the ballet is to remain, as it should, in the permanent repertory, he needs to go back and give both of these un- fortunates a little choreography to make their task of characterisation less unrewarding.

Ashton's determination to lavish everything upon the role of Ondine admittedly enables it to take its place among the greatest parts ever given a prima ballerina. Fonteyn in this is exultantly right, and this season, superbly part- nered by Donald MacLeary, she has, if anything, given it more than ever before. But this is a part made to her precise emotional measurements, and her very distinction in it makes the path of any would-be successor enormously difficult.

Last week Nadia Nerina became the third ballerina to attempt Ondine, and, like Svetlana Beriosova a couple of seasons ago, she enjoyed a fair success in meeting the Fonteyn challenge. Greatly helped by an unbendingly noble Des- mond Doyle, Nerina danced the ballet with all of her considerable technical expertise. The characterisation was less satisfying, for Nerina's stage personality is lacking in that quality of fairy magic so essential to the water-nymph; but even here was a suggestion of promise, once she can resist the temptation to over-act the fey- ness of the early scenes. Certainly, with the more falling example of Beriosova still before us, there is now no need to fear that just as Ondine began with Fonteyn it must also end with her.

CLIVE BARNES not run away with the idea that two million Britons are mad about Mahler.

It seems that the listening public for these concerts stays put at around that total whatever is played —Mahler or Mehul, Boulez or Sterndale Bennett. What kept the big battalions away may have been the Seventh's unfamiliarity and its reputa- tion for being a work that doesn't hang together and is hard to get into focus. There is much in this. Here is a symphony as diverse as an open-_ air sculpture show and on as many different aesthetic levels as those awful mountainside productions at Covent Garden (Aida and Gianni, for instance) are on physical ones. The problem for the hearer, as well as the conductor (on this occasion the American-Negro Dean Dixon: non- exhibitionist, a musician to the tip. of his baton), is one of synthesis—how to square or fuse in our minds one episode with another and make a whole out of the parts.

Nobody but Mahler could have conceived the burdened, savage mooings of the tenor saxhorn in the opening pages or its apocalyptic duet with the brass trombone later on. What, however, is the :esthetic kinship between such passages and,

to cite one. example, the nut grossem Schivung

stuff for unison violins at page 19? Between one apocalypse and the next the violins schwing themselves, as it were, clean out of the picture- frame into an ecstasy that smacks (pleasantly enough, I admit) of Rachmaninov.

A further antinomy. Both Nachtmusik move- ments are marvels. The first has fluent, gay march tunes that would put spring into the heel of a rheumatoid-arthritic. The second, with its tender stealth and its prinkings of mandoline and guitar

tone, is one of the fairest tonescapes ever set be-

fore the mind and ear of man. But what are we to make of the Scherzo that conies between? A tune occurs on the cellos at rehearsal-number 142 and again, on unison trombones and tuba, at 163, whose aggressive banality (as I hear it, at any rate) quite obliterates the Scherzo's general effect. What was Mahler's intention here? Mockery? Swipe-taking?

Since the Seventh has no 'programme' and doesn't overtly tell a story, we cannot be sure. Not that a 'programme' would make much

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283 difference. Symphonic music is ultimately to be judged by its jnner and purely tonal relations. Any flaw or incongruity under this heading is riot to be put right by appeal to extraneous books of words—or even books of ideas. This problem of intrusive mockery often crops up in Mahler, but nowhere does it perturb this hearer so much as it does in the Scherzo of the Seventh. Do not mistake me, however. I am head over heels and incurable about the Seventh. The pitifully under- attended BBC performance fulfilled not so much . an old affection as an old inkling. I have been listening ever shice to the Vienna Philharmonic recording under Hermann Scherchen. About the Rondo-finale, a vast jubilation that out-Elgars Elgar, I could go on for another column, and am counting the days to the London Philharmonic Orchestra's performance of it under Jascha Horenstein on the same platform en March 12.

A note or two about other symphonic hap- penings.

Once upon a time, and a poorish time it was, London looked deferentially to the Berlin Phil- harmonic Orchestra for lessons on inspired togetherness in string playing. Since then there has been a levelling up—and perhaps down as well. Under Herbert von Karajan the BIRO strings certainly. gave all the bloom and resonance imaginable to the big triplet melody in the Andante of Brahms's Fourth Symphony. But this is a famous and grateful plum passage which always comes off. Listening some nights later to the London Symphony Orchestra play Bartok's Music for Strings. Percussion and Celesta under Mr. Solti, I asked myself how the Berliners would have come through this test --a so much stiffer one for fingers, wrists and intellects. In particular, given equivalent rehearsal conditions, could the Berlin violas have made a better job than their LSO fellows of the cruelly exacting and exposed writing for divided -violas at the beginning of the Adagio? I beg leave to doubt it. Where the Berliners excelled on this occasion was in the suppleness and certitude of their ensemble wood- wind playing. We have nothing quite to compare with this. For individuality and stylishness of woodwind solo playing, on the 'other hand, we leave the Berliners—as so many others--standing. To cite one department only, the oboes of Mr. MacDonagh and Mr. Lord are not only a per- petual joy to hear but feathers in the national cap.