The Year's Music
IT has not been a rich year in music. The first half of it was dominated by the Mozart bicentenary, universally celebrated. A new complete edition of his works has been begun in Austria. Glyndebourne played all five of the great operas, and extended its season in his honour. Almost inevitably the centenary of the death of Schumann has been rather neglected, but the tercentenary of the death of Thomas Tomkins received due recognition at St. David's, where he was born.
The major new work of the year was Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum, written for the Venice Festival for performance in St. Mark's Cathedral. It is the biggest work he has yet written in his new serial technique, and the most important since The Rake's Progress. 'A new opera by the Swiss composer Frank Martin, based on Shakespeare's Tempest, had its first performance at Vienna. At home, Vaughan Williams's Eighth Symphony, in D minor, was introduced by the Halle Orchestra and Barbirolli. Very orchestra-conscious, using, according to the composer, 'all the -spiels and -phones and tunable percussion instru- ments known to man,' with a scherzo for wind instruments alone, and a slow movement for strings alone, it seems likely to occupy a posi- tion among the VW symphonies as the extrovert equivalent of the Sixth.
Other important new English works in- cluded Tippett's Piano Concerto, i commis- sioned by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, as disconcerting as all his best music, full of poetic originality, somewhat obscured by a poor orchestral performance and perhaps by some miscalculations of scoring. A new Piano Concerto and Improvisa- tion for violin and orchestra by Rubbra, and Rawsthorne's Second Violin Concerto, were less interesting. Bliss and Walton have added an overture each to their output, neither of much weight. At Cheltenham Fricker and Hamilton both advanced their reputations with outstanding new works. Britten has produced nothing new, but has finished, slightly late, his ballet, which like Walton's Cello Concerto, also just completed, is to have its first per- formance next year. The English Opera Group presented a new opera by Lennox Berkeley, based on the Bible story of Ruth. The general opinion seemed to be that there is much beautiful music in it, but that it is undramatic and might do better, with its high proportion of choral music, as a cantata.
Works from abroad new to this country included Shostakovich's magnificent Violin Concerto and Stravinsky's cEdipus Rex and Mavra, presented on the stage for the first time in Britain by the Hamburg Opera at Edin- burgh. The Boston Symphony Orchestra made its 'first Edinburgh appearance, under Munch and Monteux. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was substituted for the Missa Solennis on the opening night because of possible Scottish objections to giving a Latin mass before the head of the Church of England on a Scottish Presbyterian Sabbath. The Missa Sojernis was performed by Klemperer at the Festival Hall in London to mark the tenth birthday of the Third Programme. New works were commis- sioned from a number of composers, British and foreign, for first performance on the Third.
Covent Garden, which has also celebrated its tenth birthday as a national opera company, has been involved in a dispute about the quality of its singers, in which much twaddle has been written about the inadequate size of English voices, mainly by the opposition, which included Sir Thomas Beecham. The excellence of several of the Covent Garden principals was
clearly affirmed by Mr. Christie's engagement of them this year at Glyndebourne, where they held their own with distinction beside the Germans and Italians and others. Kubelik's offer to resign was rightly not accepted by the directors at Covent Garden. It must be admitted that the general standard of per- formance there, particularly in ensemble,, has gone not up but down since his appointment, but it may still be hoped, if with less confidence than at first, that his policy merely needs time to show a dividend. In December he added Janacek's Jenufa, not previously staged in this country, to the repertory.
Sadler's Wells has added Flotow's Martha and Fidelio, not played there since before the war. This was conducted by Rudolf SchWarz, whose appointment to succeed Sargent as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra next year has been announced. Sargent remains in charge of the Proms. The deaths occurred during the year of Gieseking, Kleiber, Cantelli, Gliere and Gerald Finzi.
COLIN MASON
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