A pair of broadcasts on the Bolshoi Ballet given at the end of last year by James Monahan and Arnold Haskell served to crystallise much that has been said by many enthusiasts about the relative modernity of the Russian and British ballet companies. The controversy flared up on the first night of Romeo and Juliet and has not died yet. Its lines are now familiar: some blamed the Russians for presenting poster art; others praised them for doing just that, and thereby entertaining the simple-minded but enthusiastic hordes of people who nightly come to see them at the Bolshoi theatre. On the English side some have rejoiced in our greater complexity of idea, subtlety of approach, and dedication to pure dancing, whilst others have been moved to attack our ballet as being over sophisticated—the just deserts of an essentially inbred and decadent public.

Strawinsky's interest in chamber music dates from about 1914. After the orchestral din of The Rite of Spring he suddenly turned to chamber-music textures, first in the Three Japanese Lyrics, which he quickly followed up with the Three Pieces for String Quartet and two more collections of songs with chamber instrumental accompaniment—the Pribaoutki and the Cat's Cradle Songs. Later came The Soldier's Tale, Ragtime, the Concertino for String Quartet, and the Octet. Since then his ventures into this field have been very spasmodic. After the Octet he did not return to it for nearly ten years, in the Duo Concertant, and then neglected it for a further twenty years (unless the Elegy for unaccompanied viola, written in 1944, is allowed as chamber music), when he suddenly produced the Septet, the Shakespeare songs, and the In Memoriam Dylan Thomas.

The Finnish National Opera at Helsinki is now approaching the end of its first season as a National opera, having been reorganised with increased government support. Plans are also being made for building a new opera house close to the Olympic Stadium, but meanwhile performances are given four times a week, including ballet evenings, at the old Helsinki opera house built in 1879 as a model of the Maryinsky Theatre in Leningrad, and once used as a Russian garrison theatre.

If the criterion of taking a lesson is that you spend a predefined unit of time with a teacher who then gets paid, I never had a single lesson with Bartók. Yet I do feel very definitely that the many unforgettable sessions which I spent in his house at regular intervals throughout a long number of years, helped more to shape my musical personality and my character as an individual, than any lesson I had with any of my formal teachers.

Much has already been said about the relations between Richard Strauss and the opera house of his native city. During the course of two generations there were a number of misunderstandings and there were years, too, when Richard Strauss believed he had reason to complain that his works did not get the attention in the repertory of the Munich opera which they deserved. His works were never altogether neglected, however, and men like Hans Knappertsbusch and Generalintendant Clemens von Franckenstein, who was a friend of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ensured that adequate scope should be given to the creations of Munich's greatest son.

This brief supplement to my previous article (Tempo, No. 42) is intended to amplify the references to graduate courses available at Columbia University, in case anybody should take my last paragraph seriously. I mentioned there the possibility of combining teaching and study in an American university as being a practical way to gaining a research degree, under the guidance of some of the world's leading musical scholars. My reason for choosing Columbia University is simply that I know it best through having taught there. To assist my memory I have made use of the 1956–1957 Announcement of the Faculty of Philosophy, a book of 168 pages.