THE PROMENADE CONCERTS
IT has been good to see the Queen's Hall filled once more with a happy crowd, after the thin and uncertain audiences which listened to the Promenade Concerts during the war. Even to a jaded professional critic there is a peculiar sense of pleasure to be derived from them which no other concerts can convey. One is free to smoke, to begin with, and free to move about and see one's friends; for that is one of the pleasant things about a Promenade Concert, that one always finds friends there. And just as one finds unexpected old friends on the floor of the house, so one finds them in the programme. There are many works from which the hardened concert-goer flees when he sees them put in to fill up time in an ordinary symphony concert. At the Promenades he may find himself listening to them in the company of someone who has never heard them before, and suddenly discover that they have taken on a new aspect in relation to all the music which memory has accumulated since the last time that he came across them. The more heterogeneous the programme, the more delightful it is, and one wonders what goes on in the minds of those listeners who crowd to the evenings that are given up to Wagner alone or to Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. It is on a Wagner night that one begins to be conscious of how badly the band is playing. They are trotting through the old stock extracts, which they are supposed to know by heart. The old hands are bored to death, the new ones do not yet know their way about. At least so one is tempted to think for the moment. And on a classical night one is tempted to quarrel with some of Sir Henry Wood's interpretations.
Such judgments are unprofitable, even if one could be sure that they were true. It is the homogeneous programme that alters one's critical angle. The last new versification of a suburban house-agent's advertisement in the second half of the programme restores a juster balance. To judge from old Promenade programmes, the "one-style" night must be a relic of earlier tradition. When Mr. Robert Newman first started the concerts, in 1895, there would be a Scottish night, an Irish night, a Military night, and, besides a Wagner night, a Gounod night. The Irish night meant a programme of Stanford, Balfe, Wallace and Sullivan. Sullivan still figures in our programmes; the others have dropped out, and so has the Gounod night. The programme of a Military night does indeed seem a curiosity to-day. Here it is: Military March (Schubert), overture Les Dragons de Villars (Maillart), The German Patrol (Eilenberg), Trumpet Overture (Mendelssohn), The Red Hussar (Solomon), The British Army Quadrilles (Jullien), The Drum Polka (Anonymous), and the "Soldiers' Chorus" from Faust. Maillart's overture still figures in this year's list; but probably no one wants a military programme in these days, even if it were made up from the classics. It is interesting to note that what we called a "Popular" night differed very little from the Saturday programmes of this year, in spite of the number of novelties that have in the course of time been gradually added to the repertory. The operatic selections were dropped a long time ago, but such things as Handel's Largo, Grieg's Peer Gynt, the overture to William Tell, and Bizet's L'Arlésienne have probably been played once or even twice in every season.
The book of programmes may be regarded as a fair index of average taste, and as such is instructive. English people, on the whole, have had too much common sense to allow their musical interests to be distorted by the war. It is true that modern German music is no longer heard, and that the names of modern French, Russian, and Italian composers figure largely on the programmes. But it is probably also true that the accident of the war has merely helped to consolidate a tendency that was apparent some time before. Brahms was never a composer for the man in the street. What the ordinary man wants in music is a clear-cut tune, a vigorous rhythm, and an exciting volume of sound. He gets these in William Tell and L'Arlésienne. In the presence of these and other old favourites we are all ordinary men. They are the things which the man in the street enjoys at a first hearing, the things which the cultivated musician never ceases to enjoy. It is through such music that the average man has gradually learned to enjoy Beethoven's Symphonies and the Brandenburg Concertos, for they too possess those essential qualities.
On the other hand, there is a very large section of the public which demands a more sensuous and emotional type of music. The emotion which these people seek is not necessarily erotic, nor is it consciously religious, though the prelude to Tristan and Handel's Largo (with harp and organ) are among the works which appeal to them most. It was they who made the popularity of Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss, and it is they who will establish the popularity of Scriabin. Together with this desire for sensuous emotion there is often combined a delight in curious and amusing orchestral effects. This was another factor in the enjoyment of Strauss, and it can be satisfied not only in such works as Scriabin's Prometheus, but in Sir Henry Wood's ingenious orchestral transcriptions of Moussorgsky. Brahms has always been too difficult of understanding for the William Tell public, and too austere for what one may call the "wallowers." He is hardly a composer for the Promenade Concerts at all; the Requiem, the chamber music, and the songs are his best works, and those can always be heard in their proper places.
The complaint is frequently made that the music of the modern English composers is crowded out, not so much by foreign contemporaries as by the classics. New works by English composers are played once, it is said, but never again. Yet even if we leave out Elgar, as being a classic as surely established as Saint-Saëns, there are several English works which are played over and over again. Sullivan's In Memoriam is one of those which might well be laid on the shelf; but like Walford Davies' Solemn Melody it brings in the organ, and to many English people music of this kind would appear to offer all the spiritual advantages of church-going without its discomforts, intellectual or physical. Besides these there are Mackenzie's Benedictus and Edward German's Henry VIII. dances, as well as various pieces by Balfour Gardiner and Percy Grainger, which undoubtedly possess those desirable qualities of tune, rhythm, and a jolly noise. In one case Sir Henry Wood has managed to add the attractions both of organ and batterie de cuisine, thus combining mirth with devotion.
It is perhaps because a Promenade audience is so kind and so undiscriminating that these concerts have become the recognized trial ground for new works. This year's novelties have been, on the whole, of little interest. Malipiero's second set of Impressioni dal Vero was the most original, Roger Quilter's Children's Overture the most attractive.
The want of discrimination shown by the audience is most apparent in the case of the vocal and instrumental soloists. A few years ago, it is related, the students of the Paris Conservatoire used to make a hostile demonstration against every concerto on the ground that the concerto was of its nature a bad form of art. There are indeed a fair number of musicians in this country who in private conversation will confess to much the same opinion. Generally, however, if pressed, they will make four or five exceptions, such as the favourite concertos of Mozart and Beethoven, together with Schumann's and the B flat concerto of Brahms. As regards the rest, they at least afford proof of the good manners inculcated at our music schools. The more recent ones, such as those of Rachmaninov and Tcherepnin, are no better than the others. That of Delius alone stands out as a work of real beauty. The real disfigurement of the Promenade Concerts is provided by the singers. One might have supposed that a public which had enjoyed a scena of Wagner or Verdi would refuse to tolerate the vapid domesticities of the second half of the programme. But, alas! it is probably this very domesticity that evokes the applause. The promenaders will admire Isolde's Death Scene or Eri tu, but they must worship at a distance. When they hear the other stuff they know that it is something which they themselves can sing successfully in their own suburban drawing-rooms. Sir Henry Wood was once heard to express the hope that some day there might be a Promenade Concert in London every night of the year. Could that hope ever be realized it would be the noblest monument to the man who for our generation at least has created the Promenade Concerts. But must there always be those songs? They are symbols of bondage to commercial interests.
*****
After five years of absence Busoni has returned to England, and his recital at the Wigmore Hall on October 15th showed that his playing has lost none of its former strength and vitality, whilst it has undoubtedly gained in dignity and serenity. His audience consisted mainly of musicians, and his programme was evidently intended for serious and cultivated listeners. He began with the first prelude and fugue from Bach's Forty-Eight, producing a wonderful effect at the end of the fugue by a continuous haze of pedal, through which the counterpoint yet stood out with perfect clearness. His reading of the Goldberg Variations was startling, both in its quality of tone and in its departures from the text. But it was clear that there was a considered reason for everything that was done, and as a commentary on Bach the performance was of singular interest. Busoni was at his best in Beethoven's Hammerklaviev sonata. It is probably the most difficult work in all the literature of the pianoforte. When Busoni plays one does not take technical difficulties into account; but this sonata is both supremely difficult to understand and supremely difficult to interpret to an audience. To grasp its vastness of conception and to present it without the least appearance of struggle in perfect balance of poetry and philosophy is a task which Busoni alone of living pianists can accomplish. It was evident from the behaviour of the audience after the end of the sonata that they all realised how in comparison with Busoni most other pianists, despite their admirable qualities, are very small fry.
EDWARD J. DENT.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS[4]
[4] In this section we propose to give monthly skeleton lists of the works of modern authors: where feasible of contributors to the issue current.