MUSIC
THE Halle Orchestra's concert at the Albert Hall on March 4th made the same break in the usual routine of orchestral concerts as the visit of a foreign orchestra. The only other English orchestra that regularly plays with the same aliveness, the same enthusiasm of general approach and the same perfect details of balance and phras- ing, is the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham. It is unlikely that there is any great difference in the qualifications of the individual players in any of our half-dozen chief orchestras. What seems to distinguish the Halle and the Royal Philharmonic is their esprit de corps and their enthusiasm ; they seem really to enjoy playing, to love and understand their music and to be able to communicate their attitude to the audience. Why ?
Undoubtedly the regular working with a single conductor makes an enormous difference to the spirit of an orchestra. He is a member of the orchestra himself, far more intimately concerned in the success of a performance than any visiting virtuoso or outsider and far better able to achieve it because he has shared the ups and downs of the whole body. Perhaps the most important qualifications for a conductor are simply a passion for music and the ability (which is a form of personal magnetism) to communicate it to his orchestra. These are surely the qualities which tell during what are far the most difficult and important times in any orchestra's existence—hours of rehearsal. Without them all the taste, brilliance, verve and even musicianship of the conductor are lost—no more than personal characteristics which are used ultimately for his own aggrandisement and remain exterior, foreign to the orchestras he conducts, which are merely used as his instruments. Barbirolli obviously has this passion for the music he conducts and the ability to communicate it to his players. More than any other conductor he forms a part of his orchestra, and this is surely the secret of the Halle's quality. * * * *
A new work by Sir Arnold Box was played at the Henry Wood Birthday Prom. on March 2nd. The Concertante for cor anglais, clarinet and horn had all th, composer's sense of instrumental colour and the dream-like atmosphere which has been typical of his Lest music. In fact, it was a new essay in a familiar idiom, least happy in its more boisterous moments (like most dreams) and suffering from a certain aimlessness, but with moments of nostalgic .glamour.
* * * * Norman Del Mar and the Chelsea Symphony Orchestra played an adventurous programme at the Chelsea Town Hall on March 8th. Schumann's Genoveva overture is pleasant enough and worthy of occasional revival ; and 'Dvorak's long tone-poem, The Golden Spinning Wheel, may have all the composer's faults but also has many of his virtues. It follows very closely a story which seems
both gruesome and pointless ; but adapted it might make excellent ballet music if only it were extended enough to allow of stage action. Busoni's piano concerto, with which Mewton-Wood wrestled man- fully, is a sort of compendium of post-Lisztian clichés, decked out with trappings which contrive to combine the vulgarity of the German kolossal and cheap Italian melodrama. It plays for over an hour, an hour of the piano bombinating in the vacuum of Busoni's mind which, in this work at any rate, seems to be furnished
exclusively with other people's ideas. MARTIN COOPER.
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