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In its 16 years of existence, however, the society has now & then turned up a really golden egg. At the festival's opening concert last week, part of which was short-waved to the U. S. and rebroadcast by Columbia Broadcasting System, seven strictly fresh compositions were chipped open, sniffed at. Four attracted considerable critical attention: 1) a brooding, atonal Symphony No. 3 by Polish-born J. Koffler; 2) a disjointed, queerly-colored piece for chorus and orchestra, Das Augenlicht, by well-known Austrian Modernist Anton von Webern; 3) a clever, slapstick suite, Jeanne D Arc by M. Rosenthal; 4) a Military Symphonietta in one movement by 22-year-old Vietzslava Kapralova, a good-looking Czechoslovakian girl. To Composer Kapralova, who conducted her own lusty, sprawling composition, went the afternoon's biggest hand. Dedicated to Czechoslovakia's President Eduard Benes, Composer Kapralova's Military Symphonietta was not supposed to summon up any aggressive blood. Said she: "My Symphonietta is not an appeal for war, but an appeal for a conscious defensive attitude." Principal hero of the afternoon: German-born Conductor Hermann Scherchen, who led the orchestra through the most involved scores without missing a sixteenth note.
But not all of London's contemporary music festival was devoted to contemporary music. As in the Society's former festivals, a reviving draught was provided for sweating listeners. This year's draught: two tuneful early English operas, John Blow's Venus and Adonis and Charles Dibdin's The Ephesian Matron, performed in the Parry Memorial Theatre at the Royal College of Music.