The Wireless Orchestra, conducted by John Ansell
Sullivans' Overture has been heard on many a solemn memorial occasion since its composition sixty years ago.
The story of its production has a note of personal tragedy. For tho Norwich Festival of 1866, Sullivan (then twenty-four years old) was to write a now work. About a month before the Festival he told his father in despair that he could get no satisfactory idea. His father, however, prophesied that something would be sure to happen which would inspire him. Three days later, the father died, and Sullivan expressed his grief in the In Memoriam' Overture, which was duly produced at the Festival.
This is a large-scale overture, complex, but not obscure. It opens ' at a steady pace, with religious feeling.' A simple tune is given out by a Woodwind quartet, Oboe playing the tune. This is well known as a hymn-tune. After this has been repeated, there immediately follows the main body of the piece, marked ' Very quick.' This is very dramatic music. Many distinctive tunes are introduced, and treated with great variety. The prevailing mood is forceful.
The Overture ends with the hymn-tune melody, played by the whole Orchestra and full Organ, a great triumphal song.
SULLIVAN'S Overture to the Ball brings the spirit of the Dance before us in many of its familiar forms, like tho preamble to a Carnival ball. It is spirited music, written when Sullivan was twenty-eight, before he dreamt of winning fame as a Composer of Comic Operas.
In The Merchant of Venice a Masque is held outside tho house of Shylock. The dancing reaches a great pitch of excitement, and when tho revelry is at its highest, Shylock's daughter, Jessica, escapes with her lover, Lorenzo.