MUSIC
LAST Sunday's concert in the excellent series of Museum Gallery Concerts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, being shared this year by the English Opera Group and the Boyd Neel Concert Society, was given by the English Opera Group Chamber Orchestra. This provided an opportunity to hear various works, some familiar in full-orchestra versions, played by a really small orchestra, prob- ably approximating much more closely to that for which they were originally designed than the reduced (or sometimes not reduced) symphony orchestras by which we are nowadays accustomed to hear them given. Most interesting of all was a Mozart piano concerto, that in C major, K.415, accompanied by a solo string quintet, with an effect entirely. different from that of the normal modern performance. As a historical curiosity and an experiment this was well worth putting on, and would make a useful and refreshingly different addition to the repertory of domestic piano quintets ; but such a version is unlikely to catch on with concert audiences. This is not altogether a question of spoiled tastes and historical authenticity, for Mozart's original score con- tains optional wind parts. A Bach concerto with solo string quartet or quintet is acceptable enough, but in Mozart the relation between the piano and orchestra is very different, and in this version the work had to make the worst of both worlds, being not sufficiently intimate in style to be a satisfactory chamber work, nor sufficiently large and broad in execution to establish a concerto style. The piano part, against so small an " orchestra," demanded more than usual delicacy and subtlety from the soloist, and Mewton-Wood unfailingly found the right balance. Later he was joined at a second piano by Benjamin Britten in Saint-Saens' The Carnival of Animals. This was enjoyable enough, and seemed to include improvisatory touches here and there, but it was a pity that, having been persuaded to play, Britten would not undertake one of the Bach or Mozart two-piano concertos, for his playing of such works, as of Schubert's song 'accompaniments, is almost as highly to be prized in the modern music-lover's experi- ence as his compositions themselves. There is not much scope for creative and revealing interpretation in Saint-Saens. The concert also included Wagner's Siegfried Idyll as originally played, which again is unlikely to change modern habits in performing it. This, however, unlike the Mozart, did gain something from this chamber version, which allowed its aubade-like character to emerge much more engagingly, making plain the gaiety which a fuller orchestra submerges in its dreaminess. A splendid performance of Schoen- berg's Kammersymphonie op. 9, an early, still " tonal," but already harmonically bold work, completed the programme. Norman del
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