Music
[NEW WORKS AT THE PROMENADES.]
TILE list of new works to be performed during the present B.B.C. Promenade Season was intriguing when it first .appeared. At the time of writing, however, I have found no cause for unusual enthusiasm. Frank Bridge's Impression for Orchestra (given under the composer's direction on August 20th) was disappointing, spite of its admirable workmanship. The work takes as motto the first line of the speech in which the Queen in Hamlet tells of the death of Ophelia—" There is a willow grows aslant a brook." The composer gives us not a transitive but an intransitive impression of this speech. At the end we are left untouched by his own emotion, which we must assume was deep and strong since it impelled him to embark upon the work. Occasionally we are minded of the " snatches of old tunes " which Ophelia chanted " as -one incapable of her own distress," but the poignancy of those strange songs is not to be found in Mr. Bridge's score.
At this same concert Miss Harriet Cohen played the intricate pianoforte part of Arnold Bax's " Symphonic Variations " for piano and orchestra. It was a great pleasure to observe again the delicacy and exquisite detail of her playing.
Miss Dorothy Howell was the soloist in her own Pianoforte Concerto on August 18th. This work I found mannered and unproductive, in spite of its assumption of logic and ." good form."
Yet another work with a literary pretext is Miss Susan Spain-Dunk's Poem for Orchestra " Elaine," which under- takes a musical translation of the Tennyson lines beginning- " And in those days she made a little song, and called her song The Song of Love and Death.' " This music is resource- ful enough in the matter of orchestration ; nor is it ever at , a loss for notes, so to speak. But the repeated returns to the minor thirteenth chord are tiresome at length. The ,,work leaves an impression which is wholly negative—neither
Previous page
