The Rising of the Moon is Nicholas Maw's second opera, and like its predecessor, One Man Show, it is a comedy. As far as subject matter and its treatment go, however, the resemblance ends there. One Man Show is a farce, based on a flimsy comic idea by Saki. The Rising of the Moon is a romantic comedy whose central situation—though necessarily presented in high theatrical relief—is essentially realistic and depends for its effect on the portrayal of a number of true-to-life three-dimensional characters. Beverley Cross's libretto, based on an entirely original idea, is set in Ireland in the year 1875. This was a tragic period in Irish history. After years of unavailing struggle for home rule and for the emancipation of a Catholic people from minority government by Protestants, Ireland had found herself in the mid-nineteenth century still bound in a most unfavourable union with England. Her economic and industrial growth was deliberately kept down by legislation in Westminster, prompted by fears of competition with home industry. The poverty of most Irish peasants was extreme, as it had been even before the potato famine of the late 1840s, and many were still suffering at the hands of unscrupulous landlords who were quite prepared to implement laws which made eviction the normal penalty for non-payment of rent. In these circumstances the English were naturally both hated and feared. Yet those who tried to stir popular feeling into action—Daniel O'Connell, the Young Irelanders, the Fenians—found their hands tied by Ireland's internal religious and social divisions, and by the listlessness of an underfed, underclothed, even underhoused people. Such revolutionary outbreaks as took place were isolated and poorly organised, and although the English executive in Ireland—including the army—might tend to regard all Irish peasants as potential rebels, they had long since learnt that the rebel bark was a good deal worse than the insurgent bite, and so they treated the natives accordingly.

The recent issue in this country of a 36-page textbook entitled The Kodály Concept of Music Education by Helga Szabó, accompanied by a set of three LP records, prompts me to examine the place such a scheme might have in the schools of this country. Kodály's ‘Choral Method’ has of course been available in this country for some years, and is now in the process of being reissued with new and improved texts for English speaking children by Geoffry Russell Smith. Mme Szabó's clear and vivid exposition will help to increase appreciation of its value. The book and records trace the use of the method from pre-school music activities to music college level, and the emphasis throughout is squarely placed on the development of aural ability through the use of the voice and solfa. The first musical example, on Side A, is of a two-year-old Hungarian singing a nursery rhyme; the last, on Side F, is of Kodály's Hymn of Zrinyi, sung by the choir of the Central Ensemble of the Ironworkers' Union. Each record is adequately banded, so that it is easy to locate any example, and in addition to the detailed commentary in the text book, each example is announced helpfully before it is performed. The quality of recording is lively, although somewhat marred by echo and pre-echo, and the stereophonic balance is realistic, especially in the circular games on Side A.

Like its immediate forerunner, Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony revolves round a series of vocal settings. But whereas the earlier work used poems exclusively by Yevtushenko, the present symphony takes poems by writers as disparate as Apollinaire, Lorca and Rilke. And in this case the scoring is scaled down to chamber dimensions: two singers, with an orchestra of nineteen strings and percussion, including such tuned instruments as bells, vibraphone and xylophone, and the celesta as a delicate extra.

• Maxwell Davies's Vesalii Icones (Michael Taylor)

• Harrison Birtwistle's Medusa (Howard Rees)

• Stockhausen's Setz die Segel zur Sonne (Robin Maconie)

• Richard Rodney Bennett's Victory (Norman Kay)

• Gordon Crosse's Violin Concerto No. 2 (Stephen Walsh)