MIDSUMMER DAY
ELSIE SUDDABY (Soprano) ; ROBERT MAITLAND
(Bass) The WIRELESS ORCHESTRA (Leader, S. KNEALE
KELLEY), Conducted by LESLIE HEWARD
IN the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture you will hear: (1) Fairies (light, flitting music for the first minute or so) ; (2) Festal pomp; (3) The bray of an ass (Bottom, ' translated '). These are the three outstanding ideas from which this wonderful Overture grows. The work is famous for its fine quality, and for the fact that Mendelssohn wrote it before he was eighteen.
THIS is the song-or rather speech set to music-in which the worthy Pogner, a ripe citizen of Nuremburg, declares that he will give the hand of his daughter to the suitor who shall best prove his claim by minstrelsy. The declaration is made at a meeting of Mastersingcrs on a Sunday morning in the sixteenth century.
DEBUSSY'S Orchestral Prelude The' Afternoon of a Faun is a dream-picture of a yesterday-afternoon, vaguely remembered by a Faun (a woodland half-deity) who tries to recall whether he actually encountered ' nymphs, white and golden goddesses,' or whether it was but the ' shadow of a vision, no more substantial than the notes of his own flute.'
The music was suggested by a poem of Mallarme. Its lines and its images have not been ' followed,' but rather felt or experienced, so fine and luxurious is this wonderful painting in the tones of a modern orchestra.
In Festivities, the first of three Nocturnes, Debussy intended to make a musical picture of ' the restless dancing-rhythm of the atmosphere interspersed with sudden flashes of light.' ' There is also,' he said, ' an incidental procession (a dazzling imaginary vision) passing through and mingling with the aerial revelry; but the background of uninterrupted festival is persistent, with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the universal rhythm of all things.'
Thus the aim is to give, in terms of sound, impressions of the rhythmic effects of light and of cloud-formations.
IN Summer, the second part of Haydn's Cantata
The Seasons, we have songs of noon and of sultry afternoon (' and panting languid man and beast outstretched upon the ground'); then comes this song of pleasant shades and cooling breezes. In the opening Recitative the playful Haydn lets us hear (in the orchestra) the purling brook and the hum of insects. fPHE most commanding character among the Mastersingers of Nuremburg was Hans i Sachs, a man of action (he made boots) and of 3 contemplation (ho was a poet). In the Prelude ; to the third Act of Wagner's Opera the orchestra gives us a picture of Sachs in thoughtful mood. The Dance-a light tripping measure-shows us 'prentices at play. Presently they are scattered to their posts by the approaching Procession of the Mastersingers' Guild, come to hold a high ceremony-the singing contest foreshadowed early this afternoon in ' 'Pogner's Address.'