MUSIC
Twenty Years Back
THE various musical organisations in London have put their heads together and combined forces to produce a set of programmes that, even in less difficult times, would have been unusually interesting. To grace the occasion, the B.B.C. orchestra has deigned to abandon its villeggiatura of nearly three years, and to visit the capital. The programmes are designed to include representative works by com- posers of the United Nations, but the term is not construed in any narrow sense, and the classics are not barred. For instance, among contemporaries, Schonberg, of whom the present rulers of his native land disapprove, has been included ; and Beethoven, who, to judge from Fidelio would have disapproved of Himmler, provided in the Egmont Overture a tribute to Dutch patriotism. Schonberg's Pierrot Lunaire was first performed in London about twenty years ago, and has hardly been heard of since. Although was then ten years old, it is contemporary in our recollections with Walton's Facade, with which it shared a programme. Actually the two works belong to different eras, separated by a chasm across which there is no wore than the slenderest rope-bridge of 'influence " passing from the older to the younger composer. Pierrot Lunaire represents the last flicker of the dying Romantic movement after the grand blaze-up of Tristan, Salome and Mahler's Symphonies. All that is left is this handful of ashes, almost cold. The passion has burnt itself out, and there remain only some flame- less sparks coursing about the grey sheets that were once paper, is ingenious countermovement.
The poems belong to the 'nineties, to the period of Wilde, Beardsley and Ernest Dowson. But they are presented in a desic- cated form, all their juice extracted. The actual manner of per- forming them at the Aeolian Hall, where the audience were plunged in a darkness that made it impossible to see even the titles of the poems, much less to read the score, did nothing to help apprecia- tion—especially as a strong light focussed in our eyes from the back of the platform, added discomfort without providing illumina- tion. Miss Hedli Anderson appeared to declaim—one must not say " speak " or " sing "—the poems well, but the composer's curious insistence that no note shall be kept in tune does not contribute to ease. of enunciation, and, though an English translation was used, i was difficult to make out any consecutive sense. The players, conducted by Mr. Erwin Stein with an amount of physical energy that would have been appropriate to a performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony, produced very well that effect of queer spark- patterns running through burnt paper. There are innumerable learned ingenuities in the score, but it matters far less that a canon should proceed crabwise, than that it should not sound crabbed. After this dismal but not uninteresting, and even at times fascinat- mg, curiosity, Walton's jeu d'esprit pleased the audience immensely. Facade had the advantage of a decor by John Piper, which was a delight to the eye, and of a quick wit and instrumental felicity m the music that exactly match the pungency of Edith Sitwell's poems. The rhythmical declaration, without any pretence of ausical pitch, used by Walton, is the very medium for this poetry, ad if even Mr. Lambert's quick tongue could not get all the words through clearly—and I defy anyone unacquainted with the poem to say that he could hear the words of the Tarantella—the sound of the words matters here almost as much as their sense. It is small yonder that those who could see past the juvenile impudence of this lark, perceived in the composer great promise for the future. That promise is, I feel, only partly fulfilled in the Violin Concerto 'ha was repeated at the first of these concerts. A third hearing anfirms the first impression that the work is uneven, rising to real fights in the lyric charm of the opening movement—a fulfilment this of the beauty of " The Lake " in Facade—but elsewhere over- leaded with ingenious detail and even at times (e.g., the accom- Rifted cadenza in the finale) too obviously derivative.
DYNELEY HUSSEY.
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