MUSIC
Mr. Menuhin and Senor Casaba
LAST week two famous executants were to be heard at the Albert Hall. On Tuesday Mr. Menuhin played three violin concertos at a concert given to raise funds for St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, with Mr. Paul Paray and the London Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Menuhin is the most charmingly modest of virtuosos. He came on to the platform with the conductor and led the orchestra in the National Anthem. There was nothing affected in his gesture ; it was a courteous compliment to our country. So, too, in Bach's concerto in E major he rightly played as the leading violinist in the string orchestra and not as a soloist outside and, so to speak, in opposition to it. The only trouble here was that the whole body of the Orchestra's strings produced an altogether too heavy and lumpy accompaniment, which Mr. Paray did nothing to refine.
It was interesting to hear a concerto by Vieuxtemps played by so fine an executant. Much of the music is trivial, especially the finale where the composer seems to have been haunted by memories of Beethoven's Rondo and, in the effort to avoid imitating it, produced a feeble paraphrase of one of its tunes. But the brilliant display of virtuosity can be most exciting, quite irrespective of the quality of the music. Mr. Menuhin, despite his lack of a showy manner, made the fireworks sufficiently thrilling and the cantilena in the slow movement was phrased in a manner that explained the popularity of Meyerbeer's arias in the days when there were singers who could sing them. But naturally it was in Beethoven's concerto, which was also the only one in which the orchestral accompaniment was satisfactory, that Mr. Menuhin gave his best performance. A sweet serenity of tone and the beautiful shapeliness of melodic line are more important here than a forceful manner and great resonance. And it is charac- teristic of the violinist that it was precisely in the most simple passages, for instance the coda of the first movement, that he pro- duced his most memorable effects.
On the following evening an equally large audience gave Senor Pau Casals as warm a greeting on his return after a long absence as I have ever heard accorded to any artist. The violoncellist rewarded his audience with performances in the concertos of Schumann and Elgar which showed that he is hors contours among
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