(Section B)
Leader, Paul Beard
Conducted by Albert Coates
Suite from King Arthur (for Strings)
Purcell, arr. Herbage
King Arthur, or The British Worthy was produced at the Queen's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in 1691. In addition to the music occurring during the course of the play, Purcell wrote instrumental music to be played before the rise of the curtain (called ' first music ', ' second music ', and ' curtain tune '), and the ' act tunes ', or interludes. The present suite is selected from this instrumental music. As far as can be ascertained, the Overture and First Aire formed the ' second music ', the Hornpipe and Second Aire were probably ' act tunes and the Song Tune is a transcription of the well-known ' Fairest Isle '. The Chaconne has generally been held to be the ' Grand Dance ' at the end of the opera, but there is evidence to show that it was probably the ' first music '.
Many readers of Radio Times must have seen the film Turksib a pictorial record of the making of the Turkestan-Siberian Railway (completed in 1931). This symphony by Rimsky-Korsakov's pupil and son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg , commemorates the same feat of engineering.
A note prefaced to the score explains that ' in his " Turksib " Symphony the composer has attempted, as far as is possible by instrumental means, to convey the fundamental idea of the struggle with the forces of nature, with the vast expanses of desert and wild mountain ranges, amid the peoples of a once backward and oppressed land. ... Besides statistical documents, the composer has used as literary material poems by S. Kirsanov (" The Song of Turksib") and Demyan Bedny (" Shaitan-arba ") '.