The Wireless Orchestra, conducted by John Ansell
The Westminster Singers

The Opera, Alfonso and Estrella, was never played during its composer's lifetime, but he did hear the Overture to it, for, when he was asked to write the music for the play Rosamunde, and was pressed for time, he utilized the Alfonso Overture instead of writing a new one.
The music pleased very much, though the play was a total failure. In spite of the Overture's success, it was not printed until nearly forty years after his death.
It has first a slowish Introduction, that opens with a motif we hear a good deal later - the challenging loud chord, followed by another an octave lower. This is notable in the First Main Tune, and the bit of melody which immediately follows these chords is developed into the Second Main Tune. On these ideas the Overture is briskly built up.'

Though the music for Shakespeare's Tempest was written in Sullivan's student days, it was only in 1903, after his death, that it was heard in connection with performances of the play, at the Court Theatre.
These charming dances show Sullivan in his happiest vein. A dainty pastoral like the Dance of Reapers, for instance, is the kind of light music that sounds so easy to make, but that very few British composers in Sullivan's day could produce.

It is appropriate that one Scotsman should write the incidental music for another Scotsman's play. The Little Minister, produced in 1897, was Barrie's adaptation for the stage of his popular novel. Mackenzie's tunes in the Overture are all original, with the exception of one, Duncan Gray, that is a very familiar Scots air.