(Leader, THOMAS MATTHEWS )
Conductor, HORACE FELLOWES
Relayed from
The Pavilion Gardens, Buxton
The overture to Ruy Bias , Victor Hugo 's drama of that name, was written by Mendelssohn, when he was thirty, and at the height of his powers. He loathed the play and said so, but he composed the overture simply because the proceeds of the concert at which it was to be played were to be devoted to The Widows' Fund of the orchestra. Mendelssohn himself refused to call it anything else but the Overture to the Dramatic Fund. In view of the fact that it is admittedly one of the most effectively brilliant of his orchestral works, it seems hardly credible, but none the less true, that the whole thing was composed literally in a few hours.
In February, 1887, Borodin died, and during the summer of the same year Rimsky-Korsakov worked hard on the orchestration of the former's Prince. Igor. In addition, Rimsky-Korsakov composed the Spanish Capriccio based on certain sketches he had made previously for an anticipated violin fantasy on Spanish airs. ' According to my plans ' says Rimsky-Korsakov, ' the Capriccio was to glitter with dazzling orchestral colour, and, manifestly, I have not been wrong'. The five sections of the melodious work are, indeed, brilliantly coloured and quite characteristic of the Spanish national idiom.