visits
ABERDEEN
A concert in the Music Hall,
Aberdeen
The BBC Symphony Orchestra
Leader, Paul Beard
Conductor, SIR ADRIAN BOULT
God Save the King
(Orchestration by Gerrard Williams)
1 Allegro ma non troppo (Awakening of Cheerful Feelings on arriving in the Country). 2 Andante molto moto (By the Brook). 3
' Allegro (Merry Gathering of Villagers). 4 Allegro (Thunder-storm). 5 Allegretto (Shepherd's Song : Happy and Grateful Feelings after the Storm)
Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, in F, ' The Pastoral ', is one of the very few works to which the composer outlined a programme. The music, said Beethoven, was to be considered ' more the expression of sentiment than painting '. Unfortunately, this has caused a great deal of questionable discussion on the rights and wrongs of illustrative music, more often blaming Beethoven, as Sir Donald Tovey points out, ' for leading music into so dangerous a by-path by sacrificing musical form to the demands of his external musical programme. The passage which has given most offence in the symphony is the representation of the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the quail at the end of the slow movement. That passage is a master stroke of pure musical form.'
Berlioz declared that this symphony affected him more deeply than any of the others. He described it as ' an astounding landscape that seems to have been composed by Poussin and painted by Michelangelo '.