Norman Del Mar conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Leader, Hugh Bean) and talks with John Amis

The better-known Richard Strauss tone poems have been part of the concert repertoire for so long that it comes as a surprise to find that he died less than twenty years ago. Indeed, the composer of Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel was in London as late as 1947. Tonight's Workshop assembles surely the largest symphony orchestra ever to be in a television studio-over a hundred players-and includes something from all the nine tone poems, the well known and the not so well known. There is unique film of Strauss himself playing the piano and conducting.
(Next Sunday: a performance of Strauss's 'Don Quixote' with Tortelier as solo cellist)

(Colour)