MUSIC
LARRY ADLER is our contemporary Paganini, a thaumaturgic per- former and one who has revealed new potentialities in an instrument with a history, certainly, but with no quarterings or the remotest claim even to what the gossip columns tactfully refer to as " kin- ship " with the orchestral aristocracy. If the harmonica is the poor man's Stradivarius, then Adler is the poor man's Paganini- the essence of the distinction lying in the quality of the instrument rather than of the performance. Would a more credulous age have credited Adler with the supernatural gifts, as they credited Paganini ? Certainly the sounds that he elicits from the harmonica are as far removed from the ordinary run of mouth-organism AS Paganini's fiddling from that of the ordinary orchestral hack. But Adler wears his genius with that modest, matter-of-fact air that suggests anything rather than diabolical possession ; and it was the, mountebank streak in Paganini's temperament, quite as much as his technical virtuosity, that gave rise, to the rumours (sedulously not. contradicted by this patron saint of publicity agents) of diabolical possession. There was a warm reception, therefore, for Adler at last Saturday's Prom. but there was no shudder of unholy awe when he launched out upon the new concerto written for him by Arthur Benjamin. All instruments have associations in the listener's mind and those stirred by the harmonica arc emphatically not noble, nor even wholly serious. The composer's task in writing a concerto for such an instrument is much the same as that of a hostess anxious to intro- duce to her friends a charming but, say, unfortunately named young lady who has not enjoyed a very extensive or profound education. Both will be anxious to conceal their protegee's failings and to place her in the most advantageous light, where her real qualities will shine. Certain subjects of conversation and certain shibboleths must be avoided and everything must be done to emphasise her piquant individuality and to conceal her lack of conventional, well-bred charm. Benjamin's excellent orchestral sense made him, as it were, a perfect hostess in the first and last movements. It was a baling stroke to combine the harmoaica with the celesta, for instance, their two timbres completing and correcting each other like the flavours of sour cream and red cabbage. The tone of the conversation was kept light but never allowed to become trivial, and every opportunity was
given to the solo instrument for the display of those amazing sallies of double- and triple-stopped wit which were the admiration of the audience. Only in the slow movement did it seem to me that the composer's judgment was seriously at fault. It was as though the hostess had arranged for her protegee to recite a long poem in which a large number of the words began with the letter 11 and contained a cruelly high proportion of difficult and revealing vowel-combina- tions—a kind of " How now, brown cow." A long sustained melody, only lightly accompanied, brutally emphasised the fact that the harmonica's tone of voice is in fact irredeemably common— slightly nasal and quavering and lacking in depth and consistency. Even Adler cannot confer a patent of nobility on his instrument, though Benjamin and he combined to show its many extraordinary
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