Music Authenticity
By DAVID CAIRNS Orchestral managers, of course, would much rather be told that single woodwind is authentic. Indeed the restrictive factor in the size of orchestras is more often economic than it is aesthetic. There are not so many orchestras that would not be improved by being augmented. A larger orchestra is the answer, for instance, ,to acoustical problems as far apart as those of Sad- ler's Wells and the Albert Hall (the Festival Hall itself was shocked into resonance by the impact of the Leningrad Philharmonic).
The Sadler's Wells Orchestra (whether the one in residence or the one on tour) is the most glaring example of an orchestra that is too small. There are other reasons for the low standard of the orchestral playing compared to the generally high standard of the company as a whole: tour- ing, as well as better opportunities of earning elsewhere, tends to discourage good players from joining or remaining in the orchestra. But the crux is its size. Even the augmented orchestra which Britten made a condition for the Peter Grimes production was not big enough; the sound was frequently thin, dry, light-weight (yet the Frankfurt performances, I am told, showed that the acoustics can be conquered by an orchestra of eighty). Sadler's Wells' normal force of fifty-six is simply inadequate to many of the works which its function as chief native opera house and supplier of the provinces obliges it to perform—Tosra. Frcischiitz, Tannhauser, Peter Grimes, Fidelio—and would be inadequate even if the players could be hand picked. What sort of sound can it hope to achieve with four cellos? That the orchestra can on occasion rise above these limitations and make us forget them by the spirit and vitality of its performance is irrelevant to the case—though the ability of English musicians to make a show in squalid conditions is for some reason a common cause of com- placency. Grotesque as it may seem, the man- agement can hardly afford the orchestra it has.
We should not allow the blaze of publicity now surrounding the choosing of an architect for the South Bank opera house to obscure the impera- tive need to expose a scandal at least as bad as the , conditions of orchestral concerts, and to campaign for a subsidy which will remedy it. Otherwise the promise of the new house (how- ever admirable it turns out to be) will wither for want of a proper sound to fill it.
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