MUSIC
Boccherini SUPERLATIVE quality is, by definition, rare, and it is only when we meet it—in a person, a horse, a steak, or a work of art—that there is borne in upon the mind with what shameful shifts we for the most part content ourselves. Now Boccherini's name suggests nothing superlative to the average musician, but rather the thoroughly pro- fessional, if somewhat thin, workmanship and the conventional emotional gamut of a superior Italian composer of the eighteenth century: An ensemble of five string-players adopting his name and therefore, presumably, pledged to include a large number of his 150 quintets in their programmes—this suggested nothing super- lative whatever, unless it were superlative boredom. The concert given by the Quintetto Boccherini at the Victoria and Albert Museum last Sunday dispelled my prejudices within five minutes. In the first place their playing was so good that 1 should have been prepared to accept a far less interesting programme than theirs in fact turned out. Their intonation was faultless, which is not a thing to be taken for granted, as several musically superior ensembles have shown in the last few weeks. Their tone was full, round, pure and beautifully sustained, of a 'sort that used to be called " cantabile," though no singer in my experience could have provided the model. The quality of their team-work is suggested by the fact that first and second violinists and first and second 'cellists are interchangeable, an admirable division of labour but only feasible in a body of players containing no travelling-companion or sleeping partner.
Boccherini himself provided a great surprise. Two of his quintets were played—first, one dating from 1779 and then a much more impressive work of five years earlier. This second quintet, in a stormy and dramatic D minor, is in three movements only, with no minuet as in the later work. The contrapuntal texture and the harmonic scheme of the first movement are more complex and seem to argue a greater conscious seriousness of purpose than any other Italian instrumental music of the period ; and the bold unison passages and strong contrasts in the slow movement can only be matched in the chamber music of Haydn. A " demonic " Boccherini is some- thing of a paradox ; and the A major quintet had more of the smiling grace and elegant conversational tone that we associate with the composer (largely on the strength of the too famous minuet from an E major quintet). Nevertheless the claim made by these Italian players that " the greater part of the unknown works represents a block of authentic masterpieces not inferior to those of the great German composers of whom Boccherini was in many cases the precursor " certainly invites investigation, and can have no more eloquent advocates than these players. Their concert ended with Schubert's great C major quintet ; and their playing of the supremely beautiful Adagio was an experience such as does not come much less rarely than that " spirit of delight " with which it seefned almost identical.
The Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra gave the first concert of their English tour at the Festival Hall on Saturday. It was with mixed feelings that I listened to " Deutschland fiber alles " (once again, since last year, the anthem of the Federal Republic) played immediately after our own national anthem. From the variations in Haydn's " Emperor " quartet to " Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser' " and from " Praise the Lord ye heavens adore Him "—which I vividly remember singing at my preparatory school on November 11th, 1918—to the hymn of German national aggrandisement, the lines of association are too tangled. Meanwhile, the orchestra were exercising a right in playing their national anthem and following a precedent set by other visiting orchestras from abroad. Under Hans Schmidt- Isserstedt they gave a virile and masterly performance of Beethoven's eighth symphony, and almost persuaded me that Brahms No. 2 is a big, heroic work whose lyrical charm we often over-emphasise. Richard Strauss's occasional music for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is clever, yet somehow tedious stuff. Strauss does not seem happy working on a small scale ; and perhaps no German composer finds it easy to derogate sufficiently from his autonomy to write successful theatre-music, as his humbler and more realistic French colleague often
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