PART II
(From Birmingham)
HILDA BLAKE (Soprano)
ESTHER COLEMAN (Contralto)
ERIC GREENE (Tenor)
HAROLD WILLIAMS (Bass)
THE BIRMINGHAM STUDIO CHORUS and AUGMENTED ORCHESTRA
Leader, FRANK CANTELL
Conducted by JOSEPH LEWIS

Mendelssohn, almost more than any other foreign musician, was always happily at home in this country and made many visits, from the early one which produced the 'Fingal's Cave' Overture and the Scots Symphony to his last visit in 1846, when he came over specially to conduct the first performance of 'Elijah.' The work had been commissioned for tho Birmingham Festival and was finished with all Mendelssohn's usual punctuality in spite of his having countless other duties and responsibilities to cope with at the same time. The performance, on August 26, was a triumphant success, and eight separate numbers had to be repeated, so insistent was the audience. This, if not an actual record for the first performance of any sacred work, is at least unusual. Writing home after the performance, Mendelssohn himself told his brother, 'No work of mine ever went so admirably at the first performance, or was received with such enthusiasm both by musicians and the public as this. I never in my life heard a. better performance - no, nor so good, and almost doubt if I can ever hear one like it again.'

Mendelssohn did not allow the immediate success of his work to blind him to what he thought minor defects, and after that first performance he revised considerable parts of it. In tho new form it was afterwards sung in London by the Sacred Harmonic Society; its first performance in Germany was in October, 1847; there they call it 'Elias.'