LOUISE MARSHALL (Contralto)
THE WIRELESS STRING ORCHESTRA
Conducted by JOHN ANSELL
JOHN HUMPHRIES has often been mistaken for one J. S. Humphries , and even the historian Hawkins confused them. It is to the enthusiastic researches of Alfred Moffat that we owe anything we know about John. Born in 1707, he died about 1730-still 'a young man of promising parts and a good performer on the violin.' He left in all three volumes of violin music, and the first is called in the preface, ' The first fruits of a young gentleman now not above nineteen.' It was six solos for violin with a bass ; the second volume consisted of twelve Concertos for two violins. They include a good deal of fresh and melodious music which is well worth rediscovering and offering to present-day audiences. DUPARC, although entering the ranks of music first of all as an amateur, was a pupil of Cesar Franck 's, and enjoys the rare distinction of having had one of his pieces arranged in two different forms by such illus. trious hands as Saint-Saens and Cesar Franck himself. With a stern self-criticism which the creative artist does not always show towards his own works, Duparc has destroyed quite a number of his earlier pieces, but a number of those which he has given to the world are rich in a beauty of their own. As yet he is best known to us as a song composer, and as listeners can hear for themselves in these three songs, lie has a fine sense of the dramatic as well as the lyrical value of the poems he is setting, and a real skill in finding the right musical expression for it.
FELIX WHITE is one of the present-day
English composers who owes allegiance to no established school. He began his musical studies at the early age of five, under the guidance of his own mother, but, apart from that, has practically taught himself. His first work to be given a hearing was an Overture ' Shylock,' played by Sir Henry Wood at one of his Promenade Concerts in September, 1907, when the composer was only twenty-three. Since then he has produced much orchestral music, some in the most serious vein, and some more light-hearted, as well as many smaller incidental pieces and close on three hundred songs.
The ' Arietta appeared originally as a Trio for violin, viola and violincello, and the last named instrument has interested him so much that he has composed a Study for twelve of them. In many ways he is among the most original of modern English musicians.