(Winter Season)
Constance Shacklock (contralto)
Redvers Llewellyn (baritone)
Colin Horsley (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
(Leader, David Wise )
Conductor, Basil Cameron
From the Royal Albert Hall. London
Part 1 ,
The theme of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody is the one used by Brahms for his two sets of variations for piano solo, Op. 35. Rachmaninov gives us twenty-four continuous variations, and an interesting point is that after a brief Introduction the first variation is heard before the statement of the theme. In the course of the work a version of the Dies Irae is introduced. It may not at first be apparent that the wonderfully ingratiating and romantic variation in D flat, which sounds so characteristic of Rachmaninov, is merely an inversion of the Paganini theme, transposed into the major.
When he wrote his Second Symphony, Borodin was also at work on his opera,
Prince Igor; and a great deal of it was undoubtedly inspired by visions of the glories of medieval Russia. Borodin told a friend that in the opening Allegro he was thinking of the gatherings of Russian princes and warriors in the eleventh century. The slow movement recalled the songs of the Slav troubadours, and the finale represented a festival of the heroes of Kiev, held amid the rejoicings of the people. Harold Rutland