In Search of a Theme
This being so, what the festival could do is serve it with something a little out of the ordinary. The cream of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with Klemperer and Jochum, for instance, might have been used to make palatable to the audience an important work in each pro- gramme by one of the post-Hindemith generation of German composers. What we got was the four German Bs, Mozart, Strauss, some light Stravinsky and a lesser work by Hindemith. There was, ironically, more modern German music in the two concerts by the Scottish National Orchestra, who under their new conductor Hans Swarowsky gave Hindemith's Symphony Mathis der Maier and Blacher's Paganini Variations. Similarly the Hollywood String Quartet, famous' for their recordings of modern music, instead of bringing us some modern American works, were engaged instead to play Beethoven's last six quartets, which they did not even do very well, according to their first concert. If they had done so better the idea might have seemed rather good. The choice of a related group of works like this did at least give their three concerts some sort of festival point and reason.
In this respect the chamber concerts have always been the most thoughtfully and satisfyingly planned. There were two concerts of early Scot- tish music, rather dull awl dutiful it must be confessed, but very properly included to celebrate the publication, in the Musica Britannica series, of a volume of Musica Scotica, from which the programmes were drawn. A Scottish ensemble, the Robert Masters Piano Quartet, in two pro- grammes, played two of Brahms's works for this medium, each with a modern work, and another excellent Scottish group, the New Edinburgh String Quartet, with Nina Milkina, contributed Schumann's Piano Quintet, thus giving their three concerts some loose kind of connection.
Janos Starker devoted three recitals to the Bach suites for unaccompanied 'cello, which he played with marvellous art, if a shade too impersonally for my taste. These were a con- tinuation of a series of Bach recitals given over previous festivals, at which the equivalent works for keyboard and violin have been played by Rosalyn Tureck and Menuhin. Another year per-
haps the Trio Sonatas for organ might be done. There is room in the festival for some organ music, which has never had a place in it.
It is the haphazard and unenterprising orches- tral programmes that need improvement. The worthiest idea this year was the Elgar centenary concert for the opening night. No doubt some planning may be read into the inclusion of four Beethoven symphonies and two of his piano concertos, Brahms's Symphonies 1 and 4, Piano Concerto 1 and .Requiem, two Mozart piano concertos, a complete Strauss programme, plus two other works by him, a complete Tchaikovsky programme, and a couple of works each by Mahler and Hindemith. None of this, though, can be called festival music, and festival per- formances of it by the Bavarians or the Philhar- monia under Klemperer or Ormandy, the Concertgebouw under van Beinum, and the Halle under Barbirolli, are not enough—not morally enough, that is, whatever the box office may reply.
With this sound and necessary repertory there • should be mixed, if only in the proportion one to five, or even less, some more challenging works. The only mildly challenging piece this year was Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Gestures like the first European performance of Martinu's Fourth Piano Concerto or the first British performance of a brass concerto by an unknown composer called Kox do not mend matters. If prestige is what matters to Edinburgh, these are not the composers to bestow it. What is needed is something like a planned series of works by any one important modern composer or group of composers. lf, for instance, half a dozen other works by Hindemith had been added to the two already included, and distributed across the three weeks, in place of such routine things as Till Eulenspiegel, Romeo and Juliet, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Third Piano Concerto, Stravinsky's Fire Bird Suite and the Mozart Divertimento K.251 that was played, they would have provided some common point of focus for the orchestral concerts without any damage to the box-office returns. Come to that, why not half a dozen works by Vaughan Williams or Britten? The representation of modern British music at the festival has never been good, and this year no foreign visitor need have known from the orchestral concerts that we have had any com- posers at all since Elgar. The chamber concerts offered Walton's Piano Quartet and Fricker's Wind Quintet, both early works not very repre- sentative of their composers. As for putting on a modern British opera, perish the thought. The English Opera Group has been engaged at Wies- baden and at Venice, but not at Edinburgh. One need not even think all that highly of modern British music, nor believe that the rest of the k world owes it much attention, to feel that our one
real international festival ought on principle to do more for it than this.
COLIN MASON
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