STILL. Symphony No. 3*. London Sym- phony Orchestra conducted by Sir Eugene Goossens. Symphony No. 4. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Myer Fredman. Lyrita SRCS46 (L2.34). *From Saga STXID5256 (10/66).

Robert Still's Third Symphony impressed me greatly when it was first issued; and it does so again now on a rehearing. It expounds the reactions of a generation to those world events of its time which were large enough to impinge on the lives of all of us: in three powerful movements it reflects respectively the growing menace of the thirties, the losses to humanity of the ensuing war, and the subsequent resolution (still here and there believed in) that such things should not be allowed to happen again. The programme underlies the symphony without circumscribing it: in effect the music tells of more universal emotions than those of any particular generation.

Similarly so in the case of the Fourth Symphony, now newly available on disc and a new listening experience to the great majority of us. For the avowed inspiration of its single movement is the perhaps unpromising one of the case-history of a psychiatric patient as expounded in an article in the International Journal of Psycho-analysis. Perhaps even more unpromising is the fact of the case having been an unsuccessful one: the patient finally retiring into a world of his own, the persecution-mania from which he suffered proving triumphant. The ebb and flow of his mania and his suffering are reproduced in some detail in the music; and yet just as the Third Symphony was larger than its immediate inspiration, so too is this Fourth: it is not of a suffering individual that Still's music speaks; it is of a suffering mankind. And the will to live, in real life inadequate in the patient, is yet left as the predominant impression in the music: here is triumphant power for good, not for evil. It may be that at the ending all seems lost, but it is unconvincing; it may be that persecution, or the illusion of persecution, is of the essence, but this too is unconvincing: Still takes about as naturally to the delineation of persecution as Cesar Franck did to the delineation of the Devil. Many serial composers manage to get closer than this to evil by the placement of a harp harmonic : Still, not at all the man sheepishly to follow the human race in its decline, instinctively gets close to what is good, not what is evil, and the result is a symphony of power and stature.

It is splendidly played by the Royal Philharmonic under Myer Fredman, as was and is its predecessor by the LSO under Eugene Goossens. Both symphonies are very well recorded; and where previously the Third Symphony was spread over both sides of the Saga disc, in its new Lyrita transfer it is now complete on one side, the Fourth Symphony complete on the other. Even allowing for the inclusion of the new symphony it seems a pity that a recording once available at 50p should now cost L2.34. But I hope I have left readers in no doubt that I regard both symphonies as being among the most worthwhile being written to-day.

just as this goes to press news has been received of the untimely death of Dr Still at the age of sixty. Our readers, will, I know, wish to join me in offering very sincere sympathy to his wife and daughters.

M.M.