MUSIC
A CONCERT given on May 10th by that admirable musician, Carl Dolmetsch, and devoted to music for the recorder, either with harpsichord or strings, was interesting historically but not, to me, musically satisfactory. When we speak of " chamber " music we mean, of course, music written for a secular room or " chamber " rather than for the church ; but rooms can differ greatly in size. No one would think of playing the clavichord in the Wigmore Hall, and we recently had an instance of the unwisdom of playing the lute there. These were rather " closet " or possibly boudoir instru- ments, unsuitable to any modern concert hall and to the whole con- ception of public concert-giving, with its clear division of platform from auditorium.
Recorders—distant, alto, tenor and bass—are an early form of flute, straight-blown, and their French name, flares douces, suggests one of the characteristics of their tone: The English name for the genus (which includes both flageolet and penny whistle, as well as recorders) is fipple flute, which, to me at least, suggests another characteristic and one more noticeable in the Wigmore Hall. Some- one—I think it was Mr. Desmond MacCarthy—described the Abbe Prevost as " an insignificant fribble," and after several works for the recorder I felt, unjustly, inclined to apply this description to the whole fipple family. The tone, especially of the soprano or distant recorder, is trivial in the concert-hall ; and in Corelli's La Follia, where the violin can make a wonderful exhibition of its temperamental versatility, the recorder's monotonous twitter was lamentably inadequate.
Both the skill and the disappointing results of Carl Dolmetsch reminded me of other artists, some of them equally admirable musicians, who have tried to convince us of the neglected potentialities of unusual instruments. Chief of these is Andres Segovia, in acknowledgement of whose skill and artistry I yield to none, when he plays lute music or small Spanish pieces for the guitar. But let him play the Bach Chaconne or a concerto with orchestra, and my admiration gives way to impatience with so fundamentally inartistic an attempt. A little lower than such angels, but most remarkable performers and (within their limits) artists, come Larry Adler with his mouth-organ and Lef Tollefsen with his concertina. I have heard both these virtuosos play concertos with full modern orchestra, and been amazed by their skill as I was depressed by their misuse of it. I believe—though it sounds like a music-critic's dream—that 1 heard Larry Adler play the Prelude a tap/is-midi d'un Faune in a " closed "concert at the Wigmore Hall, and that it made as much impression upon me as Segovia's playing of the Chaconne.
Our whole conception of concert-giving is being enlarged, and fipple flutes and mouth-organs, lutes and concertinas, perhaps even theremins, have all something to offer (I have a sneaking affection for those little bowls of water, too, which appear. in Indian ensembles), but they must be offered in the right place and in the right quantities, and the hierarchical- principle must be observed. Not every instrument which is worth hearing occasionally is auto- matically worth hearing for a whole concert or in a concerto with orchestra at the Albert Hall. After all, we do not cast a fine singer of plainsong for the role- of Tristan or Otello.
After the recorder I went to hear Gieseking play the piano. Perhaps no hall in London is more unsuited than the Central Hall to Debussy's Cloches a travers les feuilles, Poisson d'or and Reflets sur l'eau ; but no pianist now living can play these pieces more beautifully. Debussy was once, at a German dinner given in his honour, congratulated on. having killed melody. Thunderstruck, he protested that his music 'c'onsisted of nothing else. Gieseking's secret is that he makes ever?' note in Debussy's complex web of sound sing ; and that is, presumably, what the composer meant by melody. MARTIN COOPER.
Previous page
