LEICESTER MERCURY, 1965

Michael Tippett travelled from his home in Corsham near Bath on Saturday to listen for the first time to the Leicestershire County Youth Orchestra - the orchestra he is to conduct during next May's Festival of Music. For members of the orchestra and the music staff it was a normal Saturday rehearsal at Longslade School, with the exception that there was an extension from the usual one o'clock finishing time to three o'clock. Mr. Tippett who arrived just after midday was thus able to make a good assessment of the playing standard and also to judge their response to his own conducting. His verdict: "They are very good but you know that already. " But for Mr. Tippett there apparently was an earlier moment of doubt about the wisdom of his decision to become associated with the orchestra. The whole school area was alive with the sounds of music- making when he arrived and it so happened that the first sound that Mr. Tippett heard came from the smallest and rawest recruits. He said nothing, but the expression on his face indicated his fear that this was the orchestra he had been invited to conduct. A member of the County music staff was quick to sense the situation and to restore Mr. Tippett's mental calm. "This way, Mr. Tippett", he said, directing the composer's footsteps away from the juniors’ amiable cacophony. "The senior orchestra's rehearsal hall is further on". And so Mr. Tippett's features resumed their remarkably youthful look. As he listened to the seniors polishing up a section from Britten’s "Sea Interludes" orchestral suite, he was smiling.

THE GUARDIAN, MAY 1965

By Gerald Larner

Assembled at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, on Monday for the opening concert of the Leicestershire Schools Music Festival, the 400 or so singers and instrumentalists looked alarmingly young. What from a distance had seemed adventurous looked more like foolhardiness from close to. Even the entry of the conductor, Michael Tippett, did not quell all apprehensions, but the events of the rest of the evening finally condemned all fears as unjust and groundless.

In fact, this was one of the few concerts that can be classed as an experience. It was not an entirely musical experience, for no one could fail to be touched by the spectacle of one of this country's most important composers devoting so much care and energy to a concert by schoolchildren.

But there was more to it than this. Tippett conducted the first performance of the Prologue he had written for the Festival and was rewarded by some very bright brass and percussion playing, although this did tend to divorce itself from the voices, partly because the composer had failed to integrate the texture and

partly because the performance was not properly balanced. His Concerto for Double String Orchestra was rewarding, too. The strings of the Senior Orchestra of the Leicestershire School of Music do not possess the strength or brilliance of tone that the Concerto really needs, but the rhythms are the main thing and these were skilfully dealt with and as the composer rightly refused to relax the tempi the performance maintained its essential impetus and vitality. The counterpoint was not often obscured, the antiphonal effects came off and intonation was never so bad as to be disturbing. Perhaps the most surprising performance of all was that of Alan Ridout's Second Symphony, the other work commissioned for the occasion. It is not a great work, but it is a pleasing one with considerable rhythmic interest. Again, the orchestra was equal to this aspect of the music even in the most tricky metres, and the whole performance was admirable for its discipline, its lively colouring and its purposefulness.

In comparison with this, Elgar's "Cockaigne" Overture and Britten's Four Sea Interludes seemed mere child's play.

THE GUARDIAN, MAY 1965

With a skilful and spirited performance of Michael Tippett's oratorio "A Child of our Time" the several hundred school children who have this week been rehearsing and studying with Tippett brought the first Leicestershire Schools Festival of Music to a satisfying conclusion at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, on Friday. It was a performance which in spite of the inevitable deficiencies must have given the composer, who directed it, pleasure for there was no mistaking the commitment of these young singers. For them the conditions which permitted the enormities of the last war are history but they clearly appreciate Tippett's passionate protest against injustice and his consolatory optimism and faith in humanity's potential for goodness and decency. They sang with an intelligent liveliness which belied their youth and inexperience, dealing valiantly with the awkward accents and wicked cross-rhythms. By way of relaxation they intoned the measures of the Chorale-like spirituals with a warm religious fervour, remembering the composer's injunction to "swing" it a little. It was a performance which proclaimed Tippett's natural control of emotional tensions and a grasp of spiritual fundamentals which override questions of time and location. In short, a very creditable effort. The soloists, all of them students at the Royal College of Music, were Glenda Russell (soprano), Kathleen Pring (contralto), James Griffett (tenor) Lionel Fawcett (bass).

Shaun Dillon's " Divertimento for string orchestra," which won him the first prize in the festival's composition section, was included in the programme, conducted by Eric Pinkett, director of the County School of Music. It is a commendable piece of graceful writing.

THE GUARDIAN, MAY 1965

Leicestershire Education Committee is holding next week a characteristically adventurous Festival of Music. There will be thirteen concerts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in all parts of the county, and on Monday and Friday there will be two important choral and orchestral concerts in the De Montfort Hall, Leicester. The events in the county Include three performances of short operas by Alan Ridout ("The Rescue ") and Arthur Benjamin ("Prima Donna"), recitals by the Northern Sinfonia Trio and the Camden Wind Quintet, and a programme of prize-winning compositions in a specially arranged competition. More than two thirds of the cost of these concerts (£1,500) has been returned in advance subscriptions and it is expected that ticket receipts will cover the rest including the two concerts in the De Montfort Hall which should be well filled on Monday and Friday. At the first of these Michael Tippett will conduct the first performance of his own Prologue and of Alan Ridout's Second Symphony (both of them written for the occasion) together with Elgar's "Cockaigne" Overture, Britten's Four Sea Interludes from "Peter Grimes," and Tippett's Double Concerto. On the Friday he will conduct another work he has written for the Festival - an Epilogue - Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for four wind instruments, and his own "A Child of our Time."

Now, these programmes are to be performed not by any body of professionals, who would find them challenging enough, but by the boys and girls of the Symphony Orchestra of the County School of Music and its junior and senior choirs. None of this music has been composed especially for children - even those pieces written for the occasion show no sign of writing down.

Dedicated to his former teacher, Michael Tippett, Ridout's Second Symphony is noticeably Tippettian in style and so includes the consequent rhythmic complexities and contrapuntal texture. It does not call for individual virtuoso technique, but it does call for considerable corporate skill in sustaining a clear texture so that the interweaving melodic lines are audible on all levels (as in the slow movement for strings and percussion), for precision and a sense of the dramatic in the interpretation of the dynamics and for advanced rhythmic command to deal not only with the frequent syncopations and off-beat entries but also the many asymmetrical metres. Tippett’s Prologue ("Soomer is icumin in") and Epilogue ("Non nobis domine") are based on familiar settings of the words, but in neither case has he restrained his individuality in cross rhythms, tricky polyphony and tonality merely in order to spare his young singers.

However, to have trusted this music to instrumentalists and singers of school age is not as unwisely ambitious as it might seem. For 17 years now Leicestershire's Adviser for Music has been Eric Pinkett, and it is he who rescued school music in the county from a state of post-war inertia -and so developed it that the orchestra regularly plays abroad, gives full-scale symphony concerts in Leicester (with conductors like Schwarz and Boult), and has taken part in six previous (and less ambitious) Leicestershire Schools Festivals.

The centre of activity is the County School of Music, a meeting for rehearsal every Saturday morning at the Longslade Grammar School on the outskirts of Leicester of the most promising musicians from the surrounding county schools. The orchestra, which naturally loses many of its members every year, is sustained by a junior orchestra and the supply of instrumentalists is kept up in the schools by a carefully planned teaching programme, the basis of which is the county's seven peripatetic instrumental tutors. It is a thorough, highly developed, and apparently effective arrangement that must be the envy of most other education authorities. Perhaps the most inspired example of Eric Pinkett's planning is that this year the senior orchestra took its annual Easter vacation course at Corsham, Wiltshire, where Michael Tippett lives. Here they stayed, with a "Tempo" camera team and other fascinated visitors, near the home of the composer who rehearsed them twice a day for a week. The teachers present were impressed by Tippett's way with the children, Tippett was impressed by their orchestra, and the children have benefited enormously by this close and prolonged contact with such an original musical mind. A symptomatic story was told to me by the secretary of the Festival, Jack Richards: At the end of the week members of the orchestra spontaneously made a collection between themselves, went to Bath, sought out a respectable tailor, inquired if he were Mr. Tippett's tailor (which he was) and bought him a waistcoat. No doubt he will be wearing it in Leicester next week.

Gerald Larner

LEICESTER MERCURY, MAY 1965

Courageous and imaginative enterprises seem inevitably to get the success they deserve. And so it happened last night, that the opening concert of Leicestershire Schools Festival of Music at the De Montfort Hall, was an exhilarating triumph for all concerned in it and, in particular, for Michael Tippett whose inspiring direction and warm personality evoked playing from his young orchestra that, at times, had a touch of miraculousness about it. The programme was both ambitious and cleverly designed to display visually and aurally the two extremes of the gamut of musical education organised and run by the County School of Music. Massed choirs from nine county schools represented the beginnings of musical experience and they sang, confident and clear-voiced, and produced a proliferation of sounds from recorders, dulcimers, guitars, bells and an assortment of percussive instruments. They numbered in their hundreds and they made an impressive stage backcloth of white skirts, coloured ties and shining bright faces. The fine playing of the senior County Youth Symphony Orchestra demonstrated the quite amazing progress in individual skill and corporate response that are achieved in relatively few years.

The music they played, with the exception of Elgar's "Cockaigne" overture, was all written by composers who are still living and the same contemporary emphasis typifies the programmes of the whole festival week. A wise and fitting concept this for a generation which, more than any other, perhaps is very much concerned with its own age. Last night's concert began with Michael Tippett's

specially written prologue - a short arrangement for choir and orchestra of the traditional tune "Soomer is i-coomen in" which impressively established a mood of youthful well-being and energy. An eagerly awaited first performance was that of Alan Ridout's second symphony in three movements, dedicated to his former teacher Michael Tippett as a 60th birthday tribute and written especially for the County Schools' Symphony Orchestra at the request of the indomitable Friends of the County School of Music. The symphony may well have been an expression of the view that serialism can be fun. It has a not inflexible 12-note system and, in its outer movements, displays a wealth of lively rhythmic and melodic ideas whose natural and uninhibited flow and bustling good humour belie their tight organisation. The last movement with its extended centrepiece for solo percussion, is a sort of concentrated Young Person's Guide designed to reveal the technical strength of all sections of the young county musicians.

The slow movement for strings only provides an excellent and finely proportioned contrast, its brooding and tense atmosphere being ingeniously and assuredly created and quite moving. Alan Ridout has an orchestral vocabulary that is very much his own and, apart from the exciting sounds he invents, it is typified by the unusually precise and clean- edged textures that are an important element of his attractive style. Tippett's direction was superb and the orchestra played with professional maturity and with the obvious pride of co-ownership. Tippett's own concerto for double string orchestra was splendidly performed with a quite amazing acceptance of its technical difficulties and with a beautiful realisation of the slow movement's elegantly discursive melodic line.

Even more exacting were Britten's Four Sea Interludes from "Peter Grimes" in which the full orchestra rose to the very heights of their achievement.

There must have been many people in the audience who occasionally pinched themselves (as I did) as a reminder that this assured, virtuoistic performance

was by schoolchildren. Incredible!

The primary choirs charmed the whole audience with their delightful singing and playing - sometimes with the help of their seniors in the orchestra and sometimes wholly self-supporting. Indeed, it might be said that their rumba with full orchestral support was tile show stealer! Mr. Tippett danced on his rostrum with obvious pleasure and, when it was all over, turned to the audience and said: "We'll have that again!" This was, indeed, typical of the exuberance and the eternal youthfulness of the man. The last words of praise must go to him for the energy and devotion with which he directed the programme and for the affection and the wholehearted response which he drew from every performer.

The ovation he received was generous and enthusiastic and no one clapped more vigorously than the beaming army of primary school choristers.

R.A.P.

LEICESTER MERCURY, MAY 1965

Michael Tippett’s specially composed Epilogue brought the Leicestershire School’ s Festival of Music to a close at last night's choral and orchestral concert at the De Montfort Hall. "Non Nobis, Domine, non nobis. Sed nomini tuo da gloriam." The music, with its central theme by Byrd, represented a final act of thanksgiving. And how appropriate the sentiment for the 1965 Festival, the first of its kind, has been a wonderful and inspiring success. The choice of Tippett as the Festival's conductor and central figure proved to be extraordinarily well made. His popularity with members of the County School of Music was self evident. And it is equally true, I think, that their affection for him was due not only to the guidance he provided in the technical business of playing and singing but also to the insight he gave them into the profounder side of music.

The main work in last night's programme was his own oratorio "A Child of Our Time." It is a work which reveals both the composer's deep understanding

of the human dilemma and his simplicity and directness of expression.

He wrote the text as well as the music and the creation of the oratorio was motivated by the reprisals that followed the shooting of a Nazi official by a Young Jewish boy. The incident, however, is universalised and the child of our time, the "scapegoat", appears as Christ. "The simple-hearted shall I exult in the end." Thus Tippett paraphrases the Bible and reaffirms the eternal hopefulness of naive and humble faith, the essence of which he underlines by his introduction into his score of four Negro spirituals. It was touching to hear the work so excellently and so intently performed by the young singers and instrumentalists of the County School of Music. The soloists from the Royal College of Music were- Glenda Russell (soprano), Kathleen Pring (contralto), James Griffett (tenor) and Lionel Fawcett (bass).

"Mars" and "Jupiter" from Holst's "Planets" suite and Shaun Dillon's prize winning divertimento for strings completed the programme the latter work being conducted by Mr. Eric Pinkett (County Music Adviser).

R. A. P.