MUSIC
THE Royal Philharmonic Society's concert at the Festival Hall on May 14th was a disappointment and remains a mystery. Rafael .Kubelik, billed to conduct a largely Slavonic programme, failed to appear ; and the only reasons given in the Press seemed so inadequate and improbable that they can have satisfied no one. Is it possible that a major appointment can have slipped the memory, not only of a conductor, but of his two European agents, one in London and the other in Holland ? If so, it is no great compliment to the Royal Philharmonic Society, who will think twice before asking Mr. Kubelik to conduct another of their concerts ; or to the efficiency of of Mr. Kubelik 's agents, secretaries, managers and the like.
A large audience was, in the event, asked to accept a programme largely unrehearsed and centred on, of all unsuitable works, Tchai- kovsky 's Romeo and Juliet, which had the place of honour as the last work before the intervaL Mr. Efrem Kurtz, who took Mr. Kubelik's place, arrived in London only the day before the concert, and devoted what little rehearsal-time he can have had to Brahms's fourth symphony. But was there no work worthier of a Philharmonic concert—and familiar to a conductor and orchestra of their standing —than Tchaikovsky's gaudy and popular masterpiece ? For a master- piece it surely is, only one that already graces innumerable pro- grammes and belongs to the same category as the second symphonies of Brahms and Sibelius, that of works so grossly overplayed that even their box-office appeal will soon be exhausted. It is a prime error of commercially-concerned programme-builders to think that the public cannot have too much of what it knows and likes. - Harpsichords are in season this month, and the Festival Hall has been, if not filled, at any rate half-filled with their charming clatter and jangling. Much thought has been given to the problems of their amplification, but no mechanical device can alter the harpsichord's nature ; and when .on May 20th four of them were drawn up en echelon across the stage of the Festival Hall, it was only possible really to hear the two on the side where the listener sat. A week or so ago Frank Pelleg played, to an almost empty hall, four Or five keyboard concertos byelandel ; but on Tuesday the programme of two-, three- and four-harpsichord concertos by Bach drew a large audience. Was this a tribute to Bach, to Miss Eileen Joyce in an unfamiliar role as harpsichordist No.;, or simply an example of public curiosity stimulated by sheer numbers ?
The orchestral playing (twenty-one strings of the R.P.O. under Boris Ord) was most distinguished, and much of the solo playing brilliant and imaginative. Thurston Dart, who had been excellent in the Boyd Neel Orchestra's programme of Brandenburg Concertos a few days earlier, again shone on this occasion, playing with fire as well as grace and providing the salutary reminder that the harpsichord is before all else a brilliant " social " instrument designed to dazzle and to entertain an elegant gathering, not the gentle, archaic charmer of the Yellow Book writers' imagination. All these harpsichords playing all these concertos—five of-them in a single evening—were a strain on the attention and, in such a halt, on the ear, which had often to be supplemented by the eye • but this is unquestionably the way to perform Bach's music,. though not the place to perform it, and those who were present will not willingly go again to hear Bach's concertos played by large modern orchestras and concert grand pianofortes.
Robert Casadesus's playing of Beethoven's G major concerto with the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra was by far the best performance of that work that I have heard since he last played it in London
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