MUSIC
Moeran's Violin Concerto
A NEW concerto for violin by E. J. Moeran was played by Mr. Catterall at the " Prom " on Wednesday of last week, and won immediate favour with the audience—and this in spite of its being the intimate kind of music that suffers most from performance in the Albert Hall. Here is no orator setting fire to enthusiasm with dramatic eloquence or exciting admiration by the virtuosity of his elocution, but a quiet fellow discoursing, now dreamily, now gaily, and always charmingly. That the subject of his discourse, or rather the subject that set him talking, was the Kerry landscape is neither here nor there. We forget about it as soon as we forget about the brook in the "Pastoral," enchanted by the poetic images which the idea has evoked in the composer. And if now and then the Irish brogue proves infectious, it adds charm to the tone of voice without ever becoming affected. Whether this is a good concerto is open to doubt. Rhetoric and the dramatic attitude contribute to all the great concertos from Mozart's to Elgar's and, if you will, Walton's. Without these qualities something essential is lacking. Then, again, Moeran's design does not justify itself. Between two contemplative move- ments, the last a Lento, he places a gay and dancing rondo. It is, of course, part and parcel of his abnegation of all dramatic effect that he avoids the excitement of a resounding finale. But, at least at a first hearing, the scheme did not seem successful. The effect is tame and left one with a feeling of disappointment. I would emphasise that my criticism is not directed against the composer's refusal to conform to the conventions of the concerto-form, but to a failure to convince one that the design he has substituted for
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