Mu sic Pieces of Cake By DAVID CAIRNS THE recent week
of Prom concerts given by the Liverpool Orchestra has shown Mr. Clock's pro- gramme-building at its most crafty and imagina- tive. Only one of the Stravinsky's Symphony ;n Three Movements in a solid setting of major orchestral works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Rimsky- Korsakov and Strauss and one large choral piece (the Berlioz), it was on paper the best designed week of the season.
The playing of the Royal Liverpool Philhar- monic Orchestra, however; came in for some portentous finger-wagging by the Times; the sug- gestion—offered de (taut en bas, the metropoli- tan's mellow wisdom sadly but kindly correcting the callow enthusiasm of the provincial—was that the pursuit of 'M usica Viva,' in itself no doubt admirable and indeed, as far as anything can be said to be, indispensable, has led Liverpool into perfunctory performanees of the classics.
It may be that the rigours of a content- THE SPECTATOR. SEPTEMBER 2, porary programme unapproached by any other British orchestra have encouraged in John Pritchard and his players a dangerously relaxed, attitude in which Brahms is regarded, after Webern, as a piece of cake. But the explanation is surely simpler. Given the rates of pay and conditions of work even in so enlightened a place as Liverpool and the meagre opportunities for lucrative free-lance work outside London, it is almost impossible to assemble in any provincial town enough players of excellence to make a top-class orchestra. If the Liverpool orchestra botches its Brahms B flat Concerto at the Proms, this reflects the beggarly status of art in provincial England, not a preoccupation with the Six Pieces. The significant thing is not that the Brahms can be Poorly played but that the Webern can be Played so well. • In any case, was the Brahms really so deplor- able? It is not merely that I feel inclined to attribute uncommon sensitivity to any orchestra which clearly implied that this work is a bore and matched the sluggish pace of its argument with playing of comparable sloth (the Proms have Posed again that tragic musical mystery which is als° a psychological mystery: what went wrong With Brahms, what made the spiritual vigour and courage and generosity of the First Piano Con- Ce. rt°----performed a few days later—degenerate into the spiritual elephantiasis of the Second?). T° Construct a damning indictment on the basis of a few fluffed horn notes is to reduce criticism t0 the level of the knowing raised eyebrow of the concert beginner's traditional response to such everyday accidents—and even in these days of relative security, with wide-bore horns in general they remain occupational hazards of concert but The horn also fluffed a note in the Six Pieces, ,,r1I this did not prevent the work from far sur- Passing in atmospheric power (and, in one einportant instance, metrical accuracy) the re- corded Performance under Robert Kraft. The mrchestra's inevitable shortcomings came out th°,stkr Clearly not in any repertoire piece but in the v"untic tentativeness of parts of the Stravinsky qu'alhf)tyll°07 and in the thin violin tone and coarse the low trombone notes in the Berlioz Requiem. which are moments when Mr. Pritchard's beat, ti1.1!11 can be precise and pointed, loses concen- tration, when its mind seems to wander; the soft c`a'ashes of triple cymbals in the Requiem The individualism to the point of anarchy. it ei fact remains that this performance, while ac lacked sustained intensity, was a huge i:eVeRlellt to have brought off in the middle of relief, of hearing the 'Tuba Mirum' taken as po slowly as Berlioz indicates); that without Liver- theol the Proms would still be waiting to hear eh Schoenberg Variations; and that the general eoarfle of shabby treatment of the repertoire was ofo_founded by a vivacious and incisiveCount one Mozart's 'Haffner' and a splendidly explosive hor of the Eighth Symphony of Beethoven. The obbni: bye he way, redeemed himself in the 410_,Igato part in Britten's Nocturne. This was a cojing performance of a work which grows in eactiger — en‘e of structure and beauty of detail with deo,u bearing; and, having forsaken my patch of pro ground in the stalls and moved to the Inenade, was able to hear it. I have no particular wish to use the visit of the Stockholm Royal Opera as a stick to beat our native variety. The Swedish company offers other more strictly artistic pleasures on its own account; it also has its own weaknesses. Besides, there needs no troop come from abroad to tell us that the art of ensemble playing is a scandal- ously neglected art at Covent Garden. Neverthe- less, the lesson of the Stockholm Ballo in Maschera is too valuable to be ignored; and in case our management are disposed to ignore it, I have no objection to repeating it for their benefit. It is, in a word: not genius but standards. I shall consider the Swedes' productions in more detail next week. Meanwhile, let me warmly recommend their performance of the Verdi opera. It can be seen on two further evenings, this Saturday and Tuesday next week.
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