(Leader, Reginald Stead )
Conductor, John Hopkins
Maurice Johnstone has himself described how he ' was pitchforked into the storm-centre of English music in 1932 when he became Sir Thomas Beecham 's private secretary.' Three years later he joined the BBC's music department, and since 1938 has been .in charge of the North Region's music programmes. His Celebration Overture ' Banners,' which has been broadcast several times, was first performed at Liverpool a year ago during the Festival of Britain; it was also played at the opening of the reconstructed Free Trade Hall in Manchester last November.
Tarn Hows is an upland stretch of water between Hawkshead and Coniston in the Lake District, and in his Cumbrian Rhapsody Maurice Johnstone has expressed his love of the Lake District as a whole in a tone-picture of a favourite haunt at early morning, high noon, and evening. The music depicts the tarn, guarded by pine trees and nourished by murmuring becks, with the wide panorama of the fells in the distance. Harold Rutland