MARGOT MACGIBBON (violin)
Conductor, ELDRIDGE NEWMAN
Relayed from
The Leas Cliff Hall , Folkestone
DOMENICO CIMAROSA, an eighteenth-century Neapolitan composer, secured world-wide fame with his operas. His biggest success was The Secret Marriage, which was first performed in 1792 before Leopold II at Vienna, where Cimarosa was at that time Court Kapellmeister; At the end of the performance the Emperor invited the whole company to supper and commanded another performance immediately afterwards.
The music of this opera still retains its freshness and brilliance, which are reflected to the full in the Overture. In style Cimarosa's music, with its inexhaustible flow of simple and charming melodies, has much in common with that of Mozart.
THERE are not many violin concertos that, apart from purely violinistic considerations, deserve to be called ' great ' music-perhaps barely a dozen. Among these Mendelssohn's Concerto in E minor takes a very high place, for in addition to the beautiful and effective solo writing, the orchestral texture, light and graceful though it is, is intended to be symphonic in importance rather than a mere accompaniment to a brilliant violin solo. Each of the three movements is simple in design and lyrical in appeal. ORCHESTRA
BOHEMIA produced three distinguished composers, Smetana, Dvorak, and Fibich, who formed a national school of music during the nineteenth century. Zdenek Fibich (1850-1900), if less original and gifted than his two contemporaries, composed, nevertheless, a fair quantity of orchestral and piano music and songs which display genuine individuality and poetic feeling and able craftsmanship. Fibich was at his best in short pieces, and of these ' Poeme ', from Moods, Impressions a?id Memories (a collection of 350 pieces for piano), made his name known throughout England by Kubelik's arrangement of it for violin and piano.
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