Australian TV Plays: Concord of Sweet Sounds (18 Dec 1963)

An Australian play! Written by Patricia Hooker. A very good one.

Premise

Pianist Robert Gehrman arrives in Sydney. Maggie is his secretary who is in love with him. He is told he may never play again. The story also involves a brilliant young musical student who wants to follow in Gerhman's footsteps but has no money, and an American conductor feels Gehrman is old fashioned

Cast

Henry Gilbert as pianist Robert Gehrman
Gaynor Mitchell as Maggie his secretary
Stuart Wagstaff as Robert's American antagonist, Alexander Croyston
Leonard Bullen as Hennessy
Mark McManus as Bill
Carla Cristan as Rachel
Ron Tunstall as telegram boy
June Campbell, Janice Cook, Michaelle Safargy as typists (extras)

Production

Patricia Hooker was best known for writing radio. This was an original TV script.

Henri Safran had been producing Four Corners. He had returned from Europe several months previously but been working on Four Corners.

It was the first TV performance from Gaynor Mitchell.

Designer by Quentin Hole.

Rehearsals started 12 December. Camera rehearsals took place 16-18 December. Videotaped segment was shot on 17 Dec. (This had duration of 6 minutes.) It was recorded live on 18 December.

My thoughts on the script

Hooker seems to have been interested in the struggle of the artist - Season in Hell was about Rimbaud, this is about a concert pianist. One senses Hooker channelling her thoughts on writing through the character of the driven pianist - the unhappiness that comes with a vocation, the drive needed, the occasional ecstasy when you can feel God.

The storyline revolves around a top pianist forced to retire, his secretary who loves him and a young pianist. The young pianist is a woman and the secretary rejects her boss' proposal of marriage because she doesn't trust him - good for Hooker.

Reception

The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that:

In the imagination of most authors who dramatise the lives of concert pianists, not much can happen before flying fingers take off on the Revolutionary Study, or soulful eyes gaze out over the Liebestraum. "Concord of Sweet Sounds... while it is centred on a concert pianist, for the most part happily avoids such effusions... It contains several portraits of typed concert-world people, but its observations, even if they are conventional, are apt and convincing. The actors were admirably chosen in a splendidly fluent production by Henri Safran. "Henry Gilbert, as a veteran concert star facing retirement, was mild but dominating, with craggy, proud head and much silver hair. Stuart Wagstaff, as his musical antagonist, the smooth and dynamic young American conductor, was perhaps made to be harsher than would be likely, but he clearly, illustrated the new order against the old. Carla Cristan found the calm determination within the starry-eyed – aspiring student, and Gaynor Mitchell conveyed the devotion and final exasperation of the faithful secretary. While this brief play did little more than give a glimpse of a group of people bound to music in various ways, it did so with refreshing competence and understanding.

The Critic for the Sun Herald said it was one of the better ABC plays - "the script was rational and believable and the production was smooth."

Hooker and director Safran later collaborated on A Season in Hell (1964).

Radio production

The play was adapted for radio by hooker and performed on the ABC on 20 Oct, 1963.This production was broadcast on the BBC on 3 February 1965, produced by Eric John. Hooker's radio play Twilight of a Hero had also been bought by the ABC.

It played again on ABC radio in 1967.