The BBC Midland Orchestra
Leader, Alfred Cave
Conducted by Leslie Heward
In his ' Procession nocturne ' Henri Rabaud-one -time pupil of Massenet and since 1919 Director of the Paris
Conservatoire — deliberately challenges comparison with Liszt, for his music illustrates that episode from Lenau's ' Faust' which also forms the programmatic basis of Liszt's ' Der niichtliche Zug '. Faust, riding alone through a forest in the spring night, hears distant chanting. It is the Festival of St. John'* Eve ; a procession of children, nuns, and holy men passes. Faust watches, envying their happiness, and when they have gone buries his face in his horse's mane and weeps bitterly.
Haydn's Symphony No. 31, in D. is, unusually for him, scored for four horns instead of two. We know he had some good horn players in 1765 when he composed it at Esterhaz, and there is much more work for them than is customary with Haydn, particularly at the beginning when the ' horn signal' is heard at once.