With the concert on Sunday, there was brought to a conclusion the Tschaikowsky Centenary Festival, and the 21st season of the, Municipal Orchestra. From the reception given to the former, it is plain that the two musical programmes and the ballet were a marked success. To the critic certain of the meáns were perhaps more interesting, and potentially valuable, than the ends themselves. This may "be regarded father as putting the cart before the horse, but it remains a significant fact that whilst the orchestra has played the Sixth Symphony of Tschaikowsky many times in the past. it has never sounded; so well as it did on Sunda:
The, reason is plain: for once Orchestra's normal deficiency in strings was made up. There were double the mimper of violins; and the result was as astonishing as it was gratifymg—à balanced symphony. Or be irritatingly exact, it was large-so, for there were times when the massed voices of the strings could live been subordinated to the rest of the text. "For the rest, the symphony was played with zeal and some unfor pronounced slips.
But that is all by the way. The essential point is that the orchestra was adequately supplied strings, which is only another way of saying that to the melodic tine, there was given the phrasing, sonority and significance it requires. Dare one ask whether this augmentation may be made permanent next season?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.