. Mozart and Haydn at the "Proms."
4' TERRIBLY sad," said a distinguished-looking gentleman who was sitting near me one night at the Queen's Hall last week, in the pause that followed the end of the slow movement of Mozart's G minor Symphony. But whether he referred to the music or to the performance I could not tell, for Sir Henry Wood and his orchestra were already galumphing into the Minuet before my neighbour could elucidate his comment. It was, anyhow, a sorry performance, accurate enough in the letter, apart from those sentimental prolongations of the more tender melodies, but sadly deficient in the spirit of Mozart's music. Its subtlety is not to be conveyed by a bluff bluntness of manner nor its sensuousness by the mere expedient of slowing down the pace.
The interpretation of Mozart is, indeed, one of the most difficult tasks a perfornier can undertake. There is some volatile essence in his music which evaporates under faulty treatment. This elusive element will not yield its quality either to robust handling such as Sir Henry Wood's nor to the finicking touch of the violinist, who in this same programme reduced the Concerto in A to a thing of puny prettiness. The secret lies, I believe, in a unique combination of strength and delicacy, of sublime grandeur and the most subtle charm. From the musicological point of view it is the combination of Italian vocal music with the new but already complex instru- mental form evolved in Germany. Therein lies the secret of its interpretation. While the structure, being large, must be firmly held and not meddled with, since that would alter the stresses and put it out of shape, the melodies must be sung by the orchestra with as near an approach as possible to the ideal of human vocalization. It is, above all else, a question of line, of the shaping of that line into well-articulated phrases.
Since the kind of singing we usually hear nowadays is unfortunately no guide, I must seek an example elsewhere. A performance of the " Haffner " Symphony conducted by Toscanini, which was broadcast from Salzburg last month, will serve my purpose better than anything else. Whatever may have been the falsifications of transmission and reception -the result was not very satisfactory-the beautiful shapeli- ness of every phrase from first bar to last was patent to the car. Each note seemed to be graded in volume and duration to the next one with an accuracy which was almost miraculous and is certainly not to be expected of a hard-worked orchestra during the Promenade season. The point is, however, not how far Sir Henry Wood's performance fell below Toseanini's achievement of the nearest thing to an ideal interpretation of Mozart I have heard, but the fact that he never aimed at that quality which made for its perfection.
Haydn, who shared this particular programme with Mozart is more robust and came off better. What he lacks in sub- limity of conception and subtlety of expression he makes up with the fertility of his musical invention. The " Horn Signal" Symphony, which was played on this occasion, contains at least one outstanding example of his ability to create an impression of profound beauty by the most simple and straightforward means. The end of the slow movement, scored only for strings and horns, sounds as lovely to the ear as anything in the whole of music-as lovely as the passage at the close of the slow movement in Elgar's first Symphony. It is less complex than these imaginings of a more sophisticated orchestral technique, but it is not less ravishing to the ear. It may be that there is some conventional padding in this movement, but as a whole this Symphony must have im- pressed any intelligent listener with the greatness of a composer, who is even now too often written down as a genial and facile spinner of music and insulted with the derogatory nickname, at first affectionately applied, of " Papa."
The lighter side of the eighteenth century was represented by Haydn's Feldpartita in B flat for wind-instruments, one of those engaging Divertimenti which we have too few oppor- tunities of hearing. The ideal way to hear such works is out of doors under the conditions for which they were designed. It says much for the excellence of the B.B.C. wind-players that the Feldpartita sounded altogether delightful in spite of the
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