Jean Pougnet (violin)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Paul Beard )
Conductor,
Sir Malcolm Sargent
Mendelssohn—Brahms From the Royal Albert Hall, London
Mendelssohn composed the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream at the age of seventeen, after reading a German translation of Shakespeare's immortal play. It vividly illustrates the scenes and characters, both fairy and mortal. The opening chords are associated with Oberon's realm, and the flitting, gossamer-like theme on the strings presents the fairies themselves, as they wander ' Over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier.'
Brahms' Violin Concerto, like his Second Symphony, was written at the favourite holiday resort, the village of PSrtschach where, in the composer's own words ' all the mountains round the blue lake are white with snow, while the trees are covered with delicate green.' In these idyllic surroundings Brahms, at the age of forty-five, at last felt able to fulfil his ambition of writing a work for his old friend Joseph Joachim. Originally the Concerto was to have been in four movements, but later the composer, with his usual modesty and self-criticism, wrote to Joachim: ' The middle movements are failures. I have written a feeble Adagio instead.' The ' feeble Adagio ' is, of course, the exquisitely lyrical movement which provides a point of repose between the monumental first movement and the exhilarating finale in Hungarian style.
Mendelssohn's ' Italian ' symphony was completed shortly after the composer had reached his twenty-fourth birthday and was first performed at a London Philharmonic Concert on May 13, 1833. The symphony remained unpublished during the composer's lifetime, and is therefore known as No. 4. though it preceded the ' Scotch ' symphony by nine years. Bearing this in mind. one can only marvel at its finished perfection. Julian Herbage