MUSIC
Return to Queen's Hall
ONE advantage of fasting is that, when the fast is broken, food tastes twice as good. After two months of complete abstinence from orchestral music, except through the not wholly faithful medium of the radio, the mere sound of the London Symphony Orchestra fell ravishingly upon the ear last Saturday afternoon, when . it played at the first of six concerts sponsored by the Royal Philharmonic Society. And as it is good for the faster to avoid rich fare at first, it was well to begin with Elgar's Intro- duction and Allegro, that concerto for strings in which the composer's exuberance is chastened by the limits of the chosen medium. The result is a composition perfectly balanced, in which imagination and form are completely fused. It is music intensely personal in idiom, and as native as Purcell, yet without any "folk" influence, for all that it was inspired by the distant sound of Welshmen singing. For Elgar seized not upon a tune but upon a characteristic interval in the tune, and fashioned his own melody upon that. It is the true symphonic way of com- position. • Haydn, whose Symphony in D (No. 86) from the Paris set followed, used the same method. For, although the folk dances stick out plainly enough in his Minuets, his symphonic movements proper contain plenty of material derived from the same source, but here trans- muted by his art into the true stuff of symphony. This Minuet, by the way, contains in its Trio a particularly delightful example of the rustic style, and I think it would sound all the better for a more bucolic coarseness of tone in performance than it is the fashion to allow. This country-bumpkin dance loses something of its true character by being treated with courtly refinement
It is, as usual, in the slow movement that Haydn gives us his deepest thought. Presented here in a strangely fantastic dress, it does not touch the tragic note of the slow movement of the unfinished string quartet (Opus 103) which was broadcast by the Griller Quartet on Sunday evening. But then, the extraordinary thing about Haydn is the infinite variety not merely of his musical invention, but of the emotional content of his compositions. For all their superficial resemblances and adherence to certain struc- tural forms, nothing could be further from the truth than the notion that they resemble one another like the proverbial peas— unless it be the notion that Haydn was nothing but a musical clown. That he had a delightful sense of humour is one of his chief charms, but his best symphonies and quartets would not be the living masterpieces they are if they comprised nothing more than complacent optimism, some comic tricks and a courtly manner.
The Philharmonic Society's programme then petered out in the pianistic virtuosity of Rachmaninov's First Concerto, played by Mr Moiseiwitsch, and the orchestral virtuosity of Scheherazade, which is an outstanding example of what happens when a com- poser resorts to a folk-idiom that he has not digested and trans- formed into a personal style, and relies upon a skilful use of in- strumental colour to make up for a complete lack of a command of form. How fresh and daring did its garish barbarity seem when first we heard this music nearly thirty years ago—coupled with, indeed matched by, the brilliant colours of Bakst and the savage, albeit incongruous, choreography of Fokine! And how faded and tedious it now sounds in the concert-hall!
There are other concerts to be heard now at week-ends. The London Philharmonic Orchestra, returned from its successful tour under Mr. Jack Hylton's management of the larger pro- vincial music-hall& where it has introduced the classics to an entirely new set of audiences, is playing at the Queen's Hall on Sunday afternoons, and will be heard at the other concerts of the Philharmonic Society. The London Symphony Orchestra is giving four concerts of Beethoven's music, the first of which, conducted by Mr. Cameron, takes place tomorrow. And there is even to be a performance of Messiah on the Sunday before Christmas. These may not be as good as a feast, but they will help .to keep the wolf from the door.
DYNELEY HUSSEY.
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