The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 12

ARTS GUARDIAN 12 Thursday January 20 1972 COMMAND PERFORMANCE NEVILLE CARDUS writes the third of a series A vMttaittitoim Sim ttnmme 5 imeeafl Through this concert I came to know Kathleen Ferrier. The astounding fact is that she. by nature akin to Gracie Fields, a grand Lancashire lass, as humorous as sensitive, capable of Stoned talk and laughter should have got instinctively to the heart of Mahler, a man and composer the extreme to her, and to the English, psychology, nerves, bloodstream, and all the rest of his make-up. She had the blessed gift of what I can only call spiritual reception; that is to say whenever she found the wavelength to a composer she, while remaining Kathleen Ferrier to our sensory view, became a vessel of communication, a medium. She has, since her death, been sur-Dassed in vocal technique by' other singers of her school.

None has shared her warm, responsive nature. The whole woman of her sang, sang the music sounded bv the composer through her being. Not every composer found her on his wavelength. At Edinburgh, in 1947, grace as well as Mahler descended on her. on Bruno Walter, on the matchless Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and praise whatever gods there be on at least one music critic present.

Mavbe I have evaded the question this was not strictly, or exclusively a musical event. It was a contribution to mv more or less permanent self, to a man at the time in need of such a visitation. It was an experience that enriched my nature, quickened the antennae of consciousness of a man trying, as they say, to believe. And. as I write that foregoing sentence.

I seem to hear Kathleen's voice, her Lancashire voice, saying Come off it. Welt A cry for vanishing beauty, as singer and orchestra pressed out the bitter-sweet of the music. It was a moment of vision yet. as we thrilled and participated in it, mind and senses, we knew that it was all passing from us, even as, paradoxically, it was entering our consciousness for good and all. But though we might call out.

like Faust, Verweile doch, du bist so schon Stay, thou art so fair "it was a perishable consummation in the universe of fact and phenomena. Memory retains only a reflection, an echo from the distance. Irony of awareness The of course, was Kathleen Ferrier. She 'broke down emotionally at this performance, at the first Edinburgh Festival, unable to enunciate the closing words, Ewig( ewig" Ever, ever." I didn't then know Kathleen but, as Walter and the orchestra were acknowledging applause (she had vanished from our view), I took courage and forced my way into the artists' room, where I introduced myself to this beauteous (unselfconsciously beauteous) creature. As though she had known me all her life she said I have made a fool of myself, breaking down like that." When Walter came into the room she went to him, apologising.

He took her hands, saying My child, if we had alt been artists like you, we should every one of us have broken down." A generous response. Possibly Diderot would not have agreed, for he maintained that at the back of the artist's mind there should always be a disinterested spectator watching and controlling technique and expression. But Kathleen's breakdown was on the side of the angels all right. ning, by Samuel Langford, who was principal music critic in my 'prentice vears on the Manchester Guardian. Critics on the whole in England had in those years no time for Mahler even Komain Rolland dismissed him as second-rate and derivative.

Here I was, the native returned, in a beautiful city, with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic still alive, bringing back to me vivid impressions of lost happy hours of fully-realised living in a departed Vienna. And the woman singing in "Das Lied von der Erde was a Lancashire lass, born in Blackburn, pr thereabouts. She came to the platform, with the tenor Patzak, and as she sat, quite still, in the first movement, in which she had no part, her face seemed to feel the waves of the music passma over it. She was, as Mahler himself might have said, lost to the world, in der Welt abhanden gekommen." Then she sang The Lonely One in Autumn Der Einsame im Herbst with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic silver pointing the wonderful tints of the orchestration. It was all so perfect and rapt, silence and the brown leaf imagination evoked and stirred poignantly, without self-pity.

In The Farewell." I was given my unique experience. The singer intoned the recitative telling of the setting sun as she waited for the symbolic friend Ieh stehe hicr und harre meines Freundes." Voiceless, but none the less wondrous word-speech. Finally, in The Farewell," the singer's heart seemed to throb in her throat at the passionate cry Schbnheit, 0 Ewigen Liebens Lebens trunkene MY MOST memorable performance in the concert hall or opera house-? An impossible question to answer precisely. So, to ease the problem, I shall classify events memorable. For example for pure musical delight, ravishing the senses, Horowitz at his best during the 1930s, when he enchanted from the keyboard a gemlike flame and sparkle.

Or Beecham conducting Mozart, producing felicitous patterns of tone which gave delight, and wounded, yet hurt not. Or Schnabel for profound musical thinking, as he identified himself with Beethoven's Op. 111. Or Furtwangler for tragic intensity, in Tristan and Isolde." But there are performances which go beyond an immediate music-making and get into our consciousness, stimulating awareness to life, illuminating the sometimes darkening corridors of existence (and I am not afraid of the corny word In late summer. 1947.

I returned to England after seven years of wartime in Australia. I went to the first Edinburgh Festival, and there was Bruno Walter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in Mahler's "Das Lied von 'der Erde." It was Walter's renewal of his love and connection with the Vienna orchestra. Hitler had expelled him from Germany and Austria to say the least considering him not fit company for a pure Aryan civilisation faithfully represented by himself, Goering. Goebbels, and the rest. For years I had argued the case for Mahler as a composer of genius, encouraged and taught, in the begin MAN ALIVE on television by Peter Fiddick SO.

THE TV 4 debate is sidetracked (but not Chris, be warned) and the longer-hours wrangle starts. Be prepared for backbench bickering Longer means worse." Expect aKo a counter blast of claim1! from the professionals about the expansion of ideas and creativity that will be possible The truth. I fear, is likely to be nearer the unpenetrable grey achieved by the Minister of Post-, and Telecommunications himself when interviewed on BBC news; he made the statutory comment about how ludicrous it for the Government to dictate to the broadcasting authorities (is the Minister aware he is controlling a public franchise), and then offered us the glorious prospects of more programmes for shift-workers, and more time for experimental programmes perhaps." Television men in both networks are genuine about the hone, but thev do face the problems as Man Alive last night demonstrated. BBC-2 should stand to gain most from the change Unlike the other channels it has early and late eening hours lving empt, it can stretch into a full alternative YANSONS AND THE by Gerald Larner IT WAS an inspired idea of the Halle to present one of Arvid Yansons's all-Tchaikovsky programmes in the Opus 1 series. In their way, these concerts have to be better than any of the others if they are both to keep their audience and, moreover, persuade some of them to come to the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on Sundays and Thursdays too.

There has been too much shoddy in the Industrial series in the past. Now they are sold better, performed better, and attended better. Last night's concert was a sell-out and so is tonight's repeat. Having found the ideal place for his Tchaikovsky concerts, it is to be hoped that Mr Yansons will leave them there. True, he might have been disturbed by the not inaudible evidence of the short rehearsal time these concerts are allowed.

There were many small failures of the sort he usually eradicates bad woodwind intonation, strings not together, fumbled entries, nasty brass chords. But, let us assure him, they scarcely mattered. His interpretation of the PathGtique Symphony last night was surely the most spontaneous he has given us. programme to sport and old films on Sunday and Saturday afternoons without needing to compete. But how will it do it By stretching the old ideas Man Alive showed the danger.

Last week's was a model repoit on word blindness by Jim Douglas-Henry. It covered the country for its example, edited skilfully, to really force into your guts the frustrated agony of being an intelligent 'child restrained by some biological hangup from keeping up in a society built on literacy and standard spelling. It used television in the way that clobbers print Live images of the bov who dictates poetry to his mother trudging off to work with his pick over his shoulder the public school tones of the remedial-class lad who wanted to be a property tycoon like his dad. And then, last night, the follow up A studio discussion generating frustration of a totally different order. It was supposed to sort out the reason why the mediealpsychiatneeduca-tional experts disagree on the subiect.

thereby depriving many children of vital help. HALLE The final Adagio lamentoso was more moving and more inconsolably convincing than ever before. It's a pity he drives the quintuple-time second movement just a shade too hard but much rehearsal or little rehearsal there are few conductors with few orchestras who can get the march to exult so brilliantly. Apart from the occasional mistake, the Romeo and Juliet Overture was very much as usual under Mr Yansons's direction slow to start, not very exciting even in the turmoil at first but, on the second time round of the big tune, so touching as to lav the nerves bare -for the final catastrophe. He finds a similar dark passion in the Adagio which is his own addition (from the ballet score) to the usual six movements of the Nutcracker Suite.

It is incongruous in its surroundings, too heavy even for the Valse des Fleurs just after it, and it was the least well played part of the suite. Elsewhere particularly from the woodwind in the Arab Dance and from the percussion throughout there was much subtlety and precision. writing with unblemished happiness and coiling around to the fiddle's line when Eve (the beautiful Antoinette Sibley, with her infinitely expressive extending of long leg) penetrates the gauze curtain barrier, lined with pollarded windows, and sets the siblings in a whirl literally. The gyrations, from then on, until the slow movement brings about a pas de deux of quinessential MacMillan quality, are among the most fleet and strenuous I can recall and Dowell danced them wonderfully, with a weightlessness which is going to make Shakespeare's Puck seem a dead duck in any production I be fated to see in future. The duo, ever and anon spiked and interrupted by the brother (jealous makes a pattern of three bodies which seemed simply to grow out of the playing of the solo violin (Ralph Homes, with David-Taylor conducting).

The decor is 'by Peter Uns-worth and David Ashmole. Peter O'Brien and Gary Sherwood have minor contributions to make an out and out success of its own fey, fragile but honourable kind. Festival Hall by Edward on a knife edge so 'that the grand, opulent relaxations emerge overwhelmingly. The stands unmistakably in representation of its period, but the tensions remain" as intense and compelling today as they were in the thirties. Control of tension, the unleashing of pent-up energy similarly stand at the heart of the concerto included in the first half of this concert, the Clarinet Concerto of Thea Musgrave, written for Gervase de Peyer and played superbly by the dedicated.

What immediately distinguishes it is the dramatic role of the soloist, for he moves from one -section of the orchestra to another, rallying his temporary supporters as though in a conflict of will with the conductor. Previn rightly brought his Waltonian is so I the There were, if you haven't guessed, seven experts and more than a dozen others in the studio. It started at 8.10. there was a 15-mmute film recap, and then the experts were paraded on for their dialectical dispute and with 13 of the 50 minutes to go Desmond Wilcox said Can we get away from the label and get down to what we should be doing Not a chance. So why not edit the discussion, as they did the report Why not pick the seminal five minutes and crack it in as the climax to one good programme Could it be that the ideas are being artificially stretched Or could it be that it costs more to send a camera team out than bring the people in Or do they really think this is the way to do it Time, budget, or philosophy television will face these problems in a more critical way from now on.

And the real question is this Will longer hours mean that a programme on such a subject, capable of bringing comfort to so many ordinary people, is any likelier to reach the BBC-1 or ITV-1 audience And if not, what the hell FITZWILLIAM QUARTET in York by Brian Newbould YORK is the latest university to have acquired a resident string quartet not an established group with a ready-made 'reputation, but a young team just finding its feet as an ensemble. The Fitrwilliam Quartet is already being bold in its choice of programmes during its first academic session. Last night's concert at the Lyons Concert Hall did not look tame on paper. Inevitably there were failings in its execution, but it was not the major hurdles that brought the aspirants down. The driving fugal finale of Beethoven's Third Rasumovsky quartet, for example, challenged them to play at their vital best, almost distracting one from the unequal accomplishment of the four players.

The foregoing minuet, in contrast, severely tested their tenacity for the easy tempo they adopted a tempo that should have done justice to the composer's simple delight in sonority. The rest of the Beethoven found the cellist somewhat shy of the spotlight and rarely sounded single-mmdedly purposeful. Vet the leader commanded his wide-ranging part in the first movement confidently, lending an assurance to the total effect. Shostakovich's sixth quartet, a lightweight work with a characteristically impressive passacaglia as slow movement, was given a careful and pleasing performance. Mendelssohn's Minor Quartet.

Op. 80, was at times too careful. Its scherzo needed to move faster and with more rhythmic bite. But it was an enjoyable revival of an underplayed work which is not far below the level of Mendelssohn's three Op. 44 quartets.

The Fitzwilliam Quartet has plenty of scope for development of its already recognisable virtues. For the time being, there anyway more pleasure to be had from half-formed interpretations bv a youthful quartet than from wrong-headed or tired ones by an overworked star group. Greenfield qualities to bear on this urgent music. "Tumultuoso" is the. marking of the first of the ten sections in this long single movement, and I cannot imagine that the stuttering intensity of the main material has ever previously been brilliantly or so precisely interpreted.

As a refreshing aperitif to the two British works came a Haydn symphony, The Bear," No. 82 in with Previn again pointing the drama of the music. had never appreciated before how many foretastes of Beethoven there are here, not least in the Allegretto second movement with its pre-echoes of Beethoven's Eighth. The programme note ignored the nickname just as well when Previn's interpretation had bear-like lumbering in it but rattled rhythms with military urgency. TRIAD at Covent Garden by Philip Hope-Wallace Eddie DEAR MR MALCOLM, Please can you suggest a film I can go to with my husband without having to think too hard We are both very tired on Friday nights and want to be entertained.

But, please, that doesn't mean something that insults the intelligence, Julie Andrews is out Yours, Mrs Mather, N8. Mrs Mather, you have hit precisely the right week. You like thrillers? I have an excellent one for you. Actually, it is rather more than that. But not to worry.

You'll be entertained first, and you can think afterwards. It is called The French Connection, you can see it at the Carlton, Haymarket, and though it has an certificate, it's no Straw Dogs." It was made by William Friedkin, a young director whose The Night They Raided Minsky's," "The Birthday Party and Eoys in the Band all got good notices here. Not raves, but good. This one could get raves. It's been a sensation in America, practically saved 20th Century-Fox single-handed.

It is about this real tough-guy detective, who behaves like the liberals say all policemen behave in New York with scant respect for humanity in general and those on the wrong side of the law in particular. He is out to smash a racket, plays a hunch and almost turns up with the goods. Those he catches get off' lightly and Mr Big escapes altogether. There is a magnificent car chase, as the detective races a train through the poor area of New York. It rivals that of "Bullitt." The scene is brilliantly set among the lower depths of the most frightening town in the world.

The acting is impeccable. Gene Hackman, so marvellous in I'll Never Sing for My Father and that Robert Redford film about ski-ing, got the New York critics award for his playing of the detective. But that's not quite all. Apart from telling a pretty exciting story with great mechanical skill, Friedkin examines the cop and his prey with a sceptic's eye. The dividing line, he says, between the man and his prey is desperately thin.

Their motives scarcely differ. The crooks are in the business of misery for money. The detective is at them like a tiger because he is a product of his paranoid environment. He is as hard as they are. and almost as suspect.

Fnedkin's attitude is ambivalent. He says he went into the film a confirmed liberal about police harassment but came out uncertain. He doesn't praise or condemn, he just states. Mind you, I think there's too much chasing about and too little character development. But it is still a remarkable piece of work.

And the astonishing thing is, Mrs Mather, almost all of it is true. That's what you think about rwflrd There was a cop like this, he did break a drugs racket, the main villain did get away and is still living comfortably, thank you. The cop, is now resigned from the force and a national celebrity. Mr Friedkin is clearly going places too. It's a film I think you'll remember.

But also one you can just go and enjoy. All right Mrs Mather All right. But, for me, the most endearing film of the week is A New Leaf (Plaza, U). Elaine May, who directed, wrote Egan (right) and Bill Hickman in The French Dear Mrs Mather DEREK MALCOLM reviews new films the screenplay and acts as a foil to Walter Matthau in the leading rdle, is no Mike Nichols with a camera. You can't say it is much, judged strictly as a movie.

The joins' show, the judgment of pace is uncertain, Yet, more or less because of Matthau's superbly understated but observant playing, it has an irony and charm about it one rarely sees displayed these pyrotechni-cal days. Matthau plays a very rich bachelor who one day discovers he has run through a fortune but can't bring himself to leave the good life. His butler (the splendid George Rose) tells him that marriage to a suitably rich ingenue is the only answer. So he sets out to court a mate, backing away from the first, a heavy-bosomed rich widow screaming No, no don't let them out." Eventually he finds Miss May, playing a Plain Jane and incredibly cack-handed botanist who is so clumsy she has to be vacuumed every time she eats." Did I say she was primitive," he yells at Mr Rose. I retract that.

She's feral." The way he says it, like a latterday W. C. Fields, you know exactly what he means. There is an altogether marvellous scene when she appears, on the wedding night, in a fearfully twisted Grecian-style nightie and we watch, almost in silence, as Matthau persuades her that she has her neck through an arm-hole and her arm through the neck. Later, grasping the Beginner's Guide to Toxicology, he determines to put her out of both their miseries.

But the worst happens. He can't do it. "I'll always be able to depend on you, won't Henry she says after an abortive attempt at drowning. I'm afraid so," he answers, finally resigned. Sentimental Of course.

Sloppy Never. It's a film I'll cherish in spite of its faults as an example of what the cinema can still do without attempting to tear half your guts out. Michael Cacoyannis's The Trojan Women (Bloomsbury Theatre, Brunswick Square, U) seriously disappointed me in spite of a performance from Katharine Hepburn as Hecuba that would shrivel an orange at two paces. I think it is because the director's own screenplay never makes up its mind how classical or how naturalistic to be, ancf nor does his camera. The general effect is thus too stagey in some scenes, yet at other points not theatrical enough.

The truth probably is that Euripides can be done almost any you like, provided you do it consistently. But tie needs a theatre as his setting. The wild wastes of Atienza in Spain are impressive in all conscience, but give me Epidauros any day. Yet Miss Hepburn, even when Coco-yannis persists in poking his lenses Connection 1 halfway up her nostrils, fascinating to watch, a sexed and sighted Queen Lear. In truth it isn't her part but, my hat, she almost persuades one.

Then there is Irene Papas, a Helen who, if she couldn't actually, sink those would at least disturb most helmsmen horribly. Patrick Magee makes a more than usually believable Mcnelaus but Genevieve Bujold is too pettish as Cassandra and Vanessa Redgrave simply misplaced as Andromache. It's a curate's egg nf a production altogether, though I could be in. a minority judging by the glazed and admiring American reviews. The Bookseller Who Up Bathing (New Cinema Club, and Electric Cinema in March, X), is a promising first feature from Jarl Kulle, the Swedish actor who has adorned films like Smiles of a Summer Night and-' Dear John." Set in a remote village before the First World War, it is about a quiet bookseller who falls for a widow (Margaretha Krook of "Persona only to find that her gentility masks the past of a whore.

Beautifully photographed in colour by Rune Ericson, the film reminds one a little of Jiri Menzel and the Czech humanists. Its humour is often successfully oblique and ironic; but the story-telling iS slack and it sometimes looks as if Kulle. who wrote the screenplay from a popular novel and also plays the bookseller, gave himself rather too much to do. The Wanton of Spain (Cameo Poly, X) is said to be the first Spanish movie to get away with a glimpse of bare female breasts, though they were apparently cut off, if you see what I mean, when the Russians got at it in Moscow. This is presumably why.

an English distributor could be persuaded to take it. I can think of no other reason. An adaptation by Cesar Ardavin of La Celestina," (the play by Fernando de Rojas about an old hag who blights young love, that was written, somewhat in advance of its time, 100 years before "Romeo and it is enacted with a camp woodenness you could scarcely credit, the men made up rather more than the women. Added to that, it is engineered within a series of technical devices that went out of currency in the youthful days of, Rin -Tin Tin, whom the hero most closely resembles. Even the sets and lighting betray it.

Do they want a brick wall Then it is made of paper, painted as brick, with the joins not squared up properly. Do they want Romance Then everything is draped in Queen Mother tulle and the pink spots turned full on. All this is compounded by hideous dubbing and a translation that has people nodding Sach other and saying: Mighty and strong is the sovereign of the senses" or, even "God gives beans to he who has no jaws." The most perfect moment comes, however, when someone says Here wum any more i 11 yursetf- But he warned, Mrs Mather. Be warned. A amiable telegram from Stanley reminds me that the nrfin on "A Clockwork 238? 4p3M" Barr not Ken' KENNETH MacMILLAN'S new ballet, at last christened "Triad," was given last night for the first time at Covent Garden.

We shall see it many times with how happy I am to add immense pleasure. It is one of those ballets which instantly can be recognised not perhaps fully at first showing, as the real right thing. So it was, I remember, with Ashton's Symphonic Variations: the music, here. Prokoviev's first Violin Concerto, seems without the slightest effort to be made flesh in the three principal dancers and a trio of onlookers. It is short, pithy, poetic, mysterious, and yet crystal clear.

Swooning, swooping, swirling, the dancers are the sound. At which those who were not present last night have a right to ask with asperity But what is it about And my answer may not be helpful. It seemed to me to be about a pair of arcadian brothers, one strikingly handsome (incomparable Dowel of course) in electric blue combinations and the brother (Wayne Eagle, less assertive) in horizon blue combinations. The boys were getting along fine, ANDRE PREVIN at the IF ONE WORK had to -fie chosen to represent the musical thirties, and' the tensions of the immediate pre-war period, there is no doubt in my mind which it would have to be the First Symphony of William Walton. In just over a month from now we shall be celebrating Walton's 70th birthday, and this start to the celebrations could hardly have been more fitting, the First Symphony played by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by the most vital of Waltonians, Andre Previn.

I have now lost count how many times I have heard Previn and the LSO play this week over the past 12 months at least half a 'dozen live ones including those on the Far East tour and one or two on record too. With Trvin nar-Vi Hmp thp tension is held.