MUSIC
THE PROMENADES
Tim sudden assertion of tonality at the end of the Hindemith Concerto took the Promenade audience by surprise last week. It was necessary for Sir Henry Wood to turn and bow his acknowledgment as a sign that the applause might begin. This was the first performance of the work in England. Save for. the fact that the March episode rather missed fire, it was well played and confirmed the opinion I had formed when the work was given at the International Festival at Zurich this year. For me it is all so mighty clean and neat, and not a bit silly, as several critics have declared. You may regard it as a Bach Concerto with every instrument playing in the treble clef, if you like ; it still remains an amazingly fine piece of technique and as sure with its aim as any Bisley champion.
Dr. Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony (another work from the International Festival programmes) was surprisingly well received. I say " surprisingly " because Dr. Vaughan Williams is hardly the man to capture the imagination of the larger public, especially in this work where the mood is one of quiet unbroken contemplation. After a hearing of the Symphony recently in Worcester Cathedral, the outlines of this per- fbrmance seemed too hard, the texture too rough. The eloquent simplicity of the nave arcade at Worcester provides the perfect counterpart to the gentle melancholy of the Pastoral. R was refreshing to meet again with De Falla's exquisite orchestration in El Amor Brujo. It is one of the few scores in whieh every 'detail in the notation is effective ; in every phrase it speaks of a mind that Is Single-arid full of-light.
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