By modern standards, Shostakovich is an unusually prolific composer. Still in his early fifties, he has behind him over a hundred published works, many of them large-scale. He composes quickly, even impulsively—he says so himself—and his creative enthusiasm can sometimes outstrip his critical awareness. His Seventh Symphony, the Leningrad (1941), is doubtless an extreme example of this hit-or-miss ‘immediacy’, but the creative approach which it represents is characteristic and permeates his music. At his best, Shostakovich has one of the finest imaginations at work to-day. His gifts are very impressive; his potential remains immense. Those who contended some years ago that he was a spent force, ruined by politics, have had to think again: the Tenth and Eleventh Symphonies and the Violin Concerto, to mention only the more obvious works, have necessitated many an ‘agonizing reappraisal’.

Britten's Nocturne for tenor and small orchestra was written during August and September 1958 and was first performed at the Leeds Festival on October 16th, with Peter Pears singing the solo and Rudolph Schwarz conducting. The first London performance, conducted by the composer, was given on January 30th, 1959, at Friends' House, Euston Road, as a tribute to the memory of the late Erwin Stein.

There is criticism and there is reporting, or at any rate there ought to be. I do not mean the kind of thing we read in the newspapers, where writers criticize things they have heard and report things they haven't, in order to conceal the fact. Thus, as criticism and reportage are understood today, the former is the more responsible task, but it should really be the other way round whenever the facts are more important than the critic's opinions, which is not seldom. At the same time, opinions do enjoy greater popularity with both the reader and the critic himself: they are easier to get for either. The unpopular truth is that while any fool can opine and indeed perchance opine rightly, only a qualified observer can report, and only a qualified reader is interested in facts, plenty of them and nothing but them.

Leaving the continent of South America we come to Panamá and the five Central American Republics. In Panamá we find a composer whose star is rapidly rising, Roque Cordero (b. 1917), previously mentioned as one of the prize-winners of the Caracas Festival. Cordero studied with Ernst Křenek in the United States on a Guggenheim Fellowship and became addicted to twelve-note writing, which, however, he employs freely rather than dogmatically. Like so many others, he began along the path of folkloristic nationalism with a Capricho Interiorano (1939) for orchestra, based on the mejorana, a typical Panamanian dance; continuing with the Panamanian Overture No. II, and the ballet Setetule, on themes of the Cuna Indians of Panamá. But his main trend has been towards subjective expression in symphonic form, initiated with his Symphony I (1945) and reaching its culmination to date in his Symphony II (in one movement), composed for the Caracas Festival in 1957. This is an intensely dramatic and emotional utterance, saved from mere rhetoric not only by its communicative sincerity (which called forth an ovation from a public rather recalcitrant to musical modernism) but also by its solid musical structure.