Lucerne hears avant-garde oratorio of 1930

FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDEN1

-LUCERNE

Besides the eight symphony concerts, allotted-four each-to the Swiss Festival and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, visitors to this year's international music festival in Lucerne have had the opportunity of hearing the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on a flag-showing tour that has brought it here via Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Yugoslavia and is to take it on to Bombay, Singapore. Kuala Lumpur, Hongkong, Tokyo, and other cities in the Far East.

For this year's choral concert Lucerne has revived an avanit-garde work of the inter-war years. Vladimir Rudolfovitch Vogel (b. 1896)-a Russian of German descent who is now a Swiss citizen-wrote his fascinating oratorio Wagadus Untergang d,irclh die Eitelkeit in 1930, and it was first given in 1935 in a French translation in Brussels under the direction of Hermann Scherchen. A performance in English urder Albert Coates was broadcast the following year. The score was destroyed during the bombing of Berlin, but the composer was able to rewrite the work from his notes.

It is a setting of Leo Frobenius's version of an African Iegend of resurrection told in

the Book of Heroes of the Kabyle. The original has been dated as belonging, at the latest, to the fourth century A.D.; and the Garamantine migration, with which it is concerned, was probably in the first century A.D. This migration took Berber tribesmen across the Sahara from the Tripolitanian coast to the basin of the Niger, the route being indicated in the recital of this daousi by the recurrent repetition of the names "Dierra-Agada-GannaSilla". These are the geographical points identified with Wagadu. But Wagadu "is not of stone or earth " but is " the strength to be found within the hearts of Men". After a short introduction an Ode tells how Wagadu was revealed four times in all its splendour and as many times submerged into oblivion through human fault, and it promises a fifth manifestation more splendid and enduri'ng. The legend of Gassire's lute then describes the first eclipse of Wagadu. A repetition of the Ode brings the work to its close.

There is nothing but the rhythm of the place names to suggest Africa in this musical setting for soprano, contralto and bassbaritone soloists, for singing and speaking choruses, and for five saxophones and clariet. Saxophones were chosen for the way in which they would blend with the

voices. This they do in the sung choruses; but as an accompaniment to the recitatives they tend to date the piece rather than underline its originality. On the other hand, Mr. Vogel's choral treatment of the spoken word is often as striking today (perhaps more so, as the result of improved techniques) as it must have been 30 years ago. Each of the three battle pieces makes a remarkable sound-picture in its own way. The second of these is for spoken chorus alone, and the ostinato phrase " Nun ist er...