Britten's new children's opera, a setting of the Chester Miracle Play, was completed in December 1957 and received its first performance at this year's Aldeburgh Festival on the 18th June at Orford Church with a local ‘chorus of animals’ and an East Suffolk Childrens' Orchestra. The opera will shortly be available for performance—and it will surely receive many performances—to musicians capable of raising these modest forces in sufficient size and obtaining the services of the small number of professionals required. County Music Organizers in particular are in the fortunate position of being able to draw upon these forces, and it is very much to be hoped that they will not be slow in realizing the unique opportunity which Britten's opera affords them. From the practical performance point of view, Noyes Fludde differs from The Little Sweep in that it calls for a large number of children—a chorus of animals from the Primary Schools (the number limited only by the size of the Ark); and a young persons' ripieno orchestra of strings, recorders and percussion (at Aldeburgh this numbered twenty violins, three violas, six 'cellos, two double basses, eight descant recorders, five treble recorders, a percussion section of eight and a team of six handbells) together with bugles. The concertino instrumental group comprises a string quintet (each player representing one of the five normal departments of the customary string orchestra), recorder, percussion and piano duet.

At one of the concerts of the Bartók Festival in Basel this year, the first performance was given of the composer's early Violin Concerto. It had long been known that the first of the Two Portraits, Op. 5, was a movement from it, but the complete work was for many years believed lost. Fortunately the manuscript score had been carefully kept by the Hungarian-born violinist Stefi Geyer, for whom Bartók wrote it, and at her death she left it to Paul Sacher with the request that he and the Swiss violinist Hans-Heinz Schneeberger should perform it. They did so at Basel on 30th May, 1958.

To write at this very moment an article on Strawinsky's latest work is rather a difficult task. Like all those who write on music I have to choose between publishing a tough analysis or composing a vast introduction, a sort of guidebook. Unfortunately in the present case the former would make sense to me alone, since up to now practically nobody has had a chance to hear the piece played or to study the score; whereas the latter, alas, would make no sense at all. I shall have to try a third road and, despite Schoenberg's emphatic warning, adopt a middle course.