THE MUSIC SOCIETY T. M. Jenkinson has been elected Honorary Secretary for the coming year.
JULY FESTIVAL Our "July Festival" was started in 1946 and this year followed established precedent. The first concert was given by members of the School; the second, by members of the staff and friends. But there was inevitably some blurring of the outlines and the first concert overflowed somewhat into the second, so that the large audience on Thursday found themselves looking at the familiar faces of three trumpeters and five percussionists from the School. The first concert followed the usual plan. Soloists up and down the School played pieces they had learned during the term and offered at the prize competition earlier that week. It was good to see and hear that the younger members of the School are coming forward to take the places of those who are leaving. Of the latter, we shall be sorry to lose K. Wilson's fine violin playing, RobbinsJones's sensitive touch and Hancock's mature piano style; of the former, J. R. Precious, F. J. A. Hewitt and J. M. Smith made their debut as pianists, and I. S. T. Dutton as a trumpeter, whose tonequality and accuracy others would do well to copy. The orchestra showed how much their ability to hold the attention of the audience has improved since they last played at a concert. The Glee Club, under the enthusiastic direction of K. Brown, showed how some members of the Choir enjoy singing together out of hours. To the second concert we were glad to welcome the Madrigal Group of the Leeds Philharmonic Society's Training Choir, the "Young Phil". We were most grateful to them for showing the opportunity that exists for boys to continue with their singing when they have left school. They showed refinement and zest in their singing of the Pearsall Madrigals, and if, in the battle against solo piano and percussion in Lambert's "Rio Grande" their voices were too few and too light for a satisfactory balance, they were to a certain extent carrying out the composer's direction that the chorus was "only a part of the work and no more important than, say, the piano part". Looking back on the concert there were pleasant memories of Bizet's unjustly neglected piano duet, "Jeux d'enfants", of Mr. Ockenden's fine interpretation of the Vaughan-Williams Songs of Travel, of a delightfully cool and well-styled Chopin Nocturne, and of a trio (J. J. F. Knapton, A. McCallum and J. J. Reah) of brilliant trumpet tone. But most of all people have remembered the crisp, accurate and intentionally amusing playing of the percussion quintet (B. Jones, J. R. Anfield, K. Brown, E. W. Trevelyan, M. G. Hancock) in "Rio Grande". From the first rehearsal, when, faut de mieux, they tapped their rhythms with fingers and pencils on the desks of the music room, to the performance when they displayed to the full all the resources 37
