Leader, BERTRAM Lewis
Conductor, RICHARD AUSTIN
Solo Oboe, LEON GOOSSENS
Corelli's 'Great Concertos' (Concerti grossi) are similar in their general planning and instrumental grouping to those of Handel, which have often been represented in radio programmes and described in these columns. The stringed orchestra for which they are designed consists of a small group that often works independently in a manner akin to that of solo playing and a larger group that acts in support.
Handel's first set of oboe concertos (' Concertos for Hoboys and Violins ') was published by Walsh in 1734, as Opus 3. In 1741, the year of the Messiah, Walsh published a new collection of instrumental pieces under the title ' Select Harmony '. Part IV of 'Select Harmony ' consisted of concertos by Handel, Tartini, and Veracini, and it is the second of Handel's three contributions that Mr. Goossens is playing this afternoon. It consists of four movements : a slow movement full of golden, typically Handelian melody; a fine symphonic allegro, a delicious little siciliano, and a quick dance-like finale. The whole work is one of Hande]'s most characteristic and most delightful instrumental compositions.
Despite the fact that Brahms's four symphonies differ from each other both in emotional impulse and in various details of design, they are aesthetically of equal importance and belong to a symphonic style that may be described as romantic thought cast in a classical mould. The Symphony No. 4 in E minor is as lyrical and romantic in expression as most contemporary music of the time. But whereas so many of Brahms's contemporaries relied a great deal on a resplendent use of orchestral colouring to impress their ideas upon the listener, Brahms with a certain austerity allows the effect of his music to depend on its actual content and not upon its dressing.
Many admirers of Brahms consider the E minor Symphony the greatest of the four, but this is largely a matter of personal taste. Certainly its last movement is one of the greatest achievements in symphonic music-it is in passacaglia form : a set of variations on an eight-bar phrase.