Music

The Profession

By DAVID CAIRNS

DOWN in the College some- thing stirs. One does not under- estimate the Augean task of the

Director, Keith Faulkner; but there are healthy signs of ruth- lessness, and it is reasonable to hope that when the students of the Vienna Konservatorium

performed Figaro there last week the reaction was not the old impervious provincialism but a readiness to learn certain les- sons—the positive lesson of the maturity of the Performers on the stage (reflecting a recognition that opera is a serious art involving the whole man or woman) and the negative and familiar lesson of talented players wasted by professorial feebleness in the pit. Sir Adrian Boult has been called in to conduct the College First Orchestra; and though his warmest admirers would hardly number a pas-

sion for orchestral training among his undoubted virtues, the appointment is welcome: it estab- lishes the principle of an outside conductor and takes the post out of the deadly aura of the family circle. The First Orchestra of the Royal Academy is conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. This too is a not entirely satisfactory solution. Sir John cannot be always at hand to rehearse, and

to judge by the concert I heard a few months ago the orchestra could do a lot better still under a

Younger man on the spot; but, again, it is a step, Where paralysis had long since seemed to have set in. The next step is to appoint one of our more

vigorous young conductors—men like Meredith Davies, Colin Davis, John Matheson or Maurits Sillem. Meanwhile Sir Robert Mayer's British Students Orchestra should be organised on a regular basis, with the full co-operation of heads O[ colleges. Adequate training at college is only part of the problem. The whole question of orchestral

standards, and in particular the low standard of string playing compared with continental and American orchestras and the system of education responsible for it, is exposed in an article in a recent number of the RCM magazine. The article

by Neville Marriner, a member of the LSO and leader of the liveliest second violin sec- t.i00 in Britain. It has provoked the usual warn-

ings against specialisation and the expected bro- mides, but also a whole-hearted endorse- m_ ent by Hugh Bean, leader of the Philharmonia.

14, r. Marriner (who himself teaches at the Col- lege) wants it to provide much more systematic

Preparation for the profession and to see it as its function to produce not merely good musicians

and teachers who can play an instrument and Sing but outstanding instrumentalists and singers Who are also good musicians and teachers. He wants a more flexible curriculum (that at the '(CM C,M is conceived too generally—'excellent ?thing for experience and musicianship but enervating to virtuosity') and earlier and more intense training for gifted children. A string PiaYer 'should be technically secure before the gb!e of twenty • most of our scholarship en- .ants are at least five years behind schedule when they arrive at college.'

It is as much a matter of mentality as of or- ganisation. Amateurism is deep and widespread in , national consciousness. But things are chang- Inrg...There is plenty of conscientiousness and dis-

'Phtled vitality about—witness the recent lively production of The Rape of Lucretia and Auber's Fra Diavolo by Morley College and the National School of Opera respectively. Organisations like the Philharmonia Chorus and the National Youth Orchestra are evidence of an increasingly serious spirit in amateur music. It remains to get the same spirit established in professional music and all those responsible for it.