In a market glutted by young musicians, almost too many symphony orchestras, and too little opera and ballet, the London musical scene presents a series of odd contrasts. Perhaps the most interesting feature is the spectacle of an opera company in acute growing pains. London's historic Royal Opera House in Covent Garden has long been without a regular opera company, but the queues of eager customers buy out every performance of such old standbyes as "Carmen" and "Manon" weeks in advance.

The fortunate exception to the new company's conservatively cautious program was an excellent production of Purcell's "Fairy Queen." This piece, officially a "masque," is an adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" written by Purcell and an anonymous poet and has not been produced (except for a short revival at Oxford and Cambridge in the '20's) since the seventeenth century. The adapting was rather liberal and none of Shakespeare is actually put to music. But in keeping with the tradition of the masque (an early and predominantly English musical form of combined opera and ballet) Purcell includes many exquisite dances, very ingeniously performed by the Sadler Wells Ballet Company.

Even the swarms of eager young musicians whose war-stunted careers are blossoming out all over England cannot adequately fill the ranks of the nine symphony orchestras in London. Without including the minor ones, there are three first rate orchestras. The B.B.C., alternately under the direction of Sir Adrian Boult and Basil Cameron, is probably the best, giving regular weekly concerts and, during winter and summer seasons, nightly promenade concerts in a 10,000 seat monstrosity called the Royal Albert Hall. The London Symphony, under Malcolm Sargent, also performs once a week at the Albert; while the London Philharmonic since its fight with Beecham has been struggling along with guest conductors of no particular merit. Beecham and his new child, the Royal Philharmonic, have thus far been preoccupied in touring Europe and the so-called provinces.

Recitals are again more a matter of quantity than quality: Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach cycles are being given concurrently this month by the young musicians. The big sensation of the past month was the arrival of Claudio Arrau. Billed, by a quote from the Boston Herald, as the "greatest pianist of our time," the Chilean virtuoso almost lived up to the title. Between masterful performance of the G major and E flat Beethoven concerti, he gave an immensely successful recital highlighted by magnificent performances of the Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue and the Brahms Variations on a theme by Pagannini.

The most unfortunate side of the London picture is probably the most sterile programming imagination in Europe. Fed on nothing but repeated doses of Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Tehaikovsky, and Mozart, the English concert goer begins after a month or so to be visited by an uneasy feeling that this is where he came in. This tendency toward repetition is fostered by the English musicians, many of them known only locally, who get a fixed program of works and then stick to them: Benno Moisewitch, for example, has been playing the Rachmaninoff concerti almost ad nauseum, and Solomon has long had a fixation on the Emperor Concerte.

No analysis of London musical life is complete without some mention of the B.B.C.'s magnificent "Third Program." With a love for cycles, this program has broadcast B.B.C. sponsored recitals of the Bach cello suites, the Beethoven piano sonatas, the Well-Tempered Clavier suites, and the Mozart violin concerti; and in other fields has given a Shaw festival and innumerable "readings" of badly neglected English literature.