Margaret Severn (Contralto), The Wireless Male Chorus (Chorus Master, Stanford Robinson), The B.B.C. Studio Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by Sir George Henschel.
The programme will be devoted to the music of Brahms.
Singer, pianist, accompanist, teacher, concert-giver, composer, and conductor - Sir George Henschel made his first appearance as a singer almost seventy-two years ago. Three years later he made his first public appearance as a pianist. Nevertheless, it was as a singer that we first knew him in this country, and he was among the pioneers of 'Vocal recitals'. In 1881, the year of his marriage to Miss Lillian Bailey, the American singer with whom he had often sung in duets, he was appointed conductor of the newly-formed Boston Symphony Orchestra; but after three years in America, he made his home in England. It was he who established the London Symphony Concerts, and for some years he conducted the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow and Edinburgh, bringing the orchestra to Windsor in 1895 to give a Command Performance.

Orchestra:
Academic Festival Overture
Margaret Severn, Chorus and Orchestra:
Rhapsody, for Alto, Male Chorus and Orchestra
"But alone there - Who is't? In the bushes his path now is lost,
After him the branches close together,
The grass rises again, oblivion engulfs him.

Ah, who healeth the sorrows of him whose balsam turned poison,
Who but hate of men out of the fullness of love has drunk?
First despised, then a despiser.
Secretly he now feeds on his own worth
In unsatisfied self-love.

Is upon thy psalter, Father of love divine,
One tone that his ear may distinguish?
Oh, so comfort his heart!
Open thou his clouded sight,
Show him the thousand fountains
Close to the thirsty one in the desert"
(From the English version of Goethe's poem, made by Sir George Henschel)

Orchestra:
Symphony, No. 2, in D: Allegro non troppo; Adagio non troppo; Allegretto grazioso (Quasi andantino); Allegro con spirito