WILLIAM BARRAND (Bass), THE WIRELESS CHORUS, THE WIRELESS ORCHESTRA
Conducted by STANFORD ROBINSON
Overture, 'The May Queen '
Sterndale Bennett
SIR WILLIAM STERN
DALE BENNETT was a leading figure in the Victorian world of music, and did more for his generation than we are want to remember now. He was one of the first students at the Royal Academy of Music, which in those days was in comparatively humble quarters off Hanover Square. It was a boarding-school then. He had the good luck to play at one of the Academy Concerts at which Mendelssohn was present, and then and there began a friendship which had a considerable influence on Bennett's career. He visited Leipzig more than once at Mendelssohn's invitation and played and conducted his own music in the famous Gewand bans Schumann was also keenly interested in the young Englishman and spoke very warmly of him in the columns of his own paper.
In the course of his long and busy career. Sir William held many important appointments, first of which was at the Royal Academy, whose Principal he became in 1816. He was Professor of Music at Cambridge and founder of the Bach Society. His own music is now very little played, although the Cantata 'The May Queen' is still sometimes sung by choral societies. It was composed for the Leeds Festival of 1858, at which had been asked to conduct, and was for long the most popular English work in its class. It is thoroughly tuneful and melodious, enjoyable to sing as well as to hear.
LIKE Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Edward German showed his interest in music at an early age by organizing and conducting a local band in his native town, arranging, and even composing, most of the music which they played. But after some years at the Royal Academy of Music, first as a student and afterwards as professor, the Theatre claimed much of his attention, and the music which he has written for many of the Shakespeare plays has had a large share in making him the popular composer he is. His own two Operas, Merne Englarvi and A Princess of Kensington, leave no room for doubt as to the direction in which his genius has found its happiest expression.
The Theme and Six Diversions are easily recognizable as a kin to his popular Dances and several of the Variations are actual dance tunes. The Theme is introduced by a brief Prelude in which the same tune is heard in a slightly altered form, suggesting the Dorian mode. It is itself a very straightforward tune, and though the Diversions are worked out with great interest and variety, their kinship with the tune is never lost sight of. Throughout the fourth and at the beginning of the sixth, the theme is heard almost in its original guise.

3.40 WILLIAM BARRAND, Chorus and Orchestra Dirge for Two Veterans - Charles Wood
3.52 ORCHESTRA Suite. â?? The Merchant of Venice ' - Sullivan
4.8 CHORUS Part Songs : A Love Symphony - Percy Pitt
My Love dwelt in a Northern Land - Elgar
The Leprechaun - Bantock
4.20 WILLIAM BARRAND Songs 4.30 ORCHESTRA Theme and Six Diversions - German
4.50 CHORUS and Orchestra Hey Nonny No' - Ethel Smyth