Conductor, Sir DAN GODFREY
LAFFITTE (Pianoforte)
Relayed from The Pavilion, Bournemouth LAFFITTE and Orchestra
Moscow has always been the headquarters of conservatism in Kussian music, and it was from this city that Rachmaninov graduated. His music belongs to the late nineteenth century Romantic Movement, since in technique and idiom he remains unaffected by the more advanced innovations in form and harmony of the present century. Nevertheless, throughout Rachmaninov's music a powerful individuality asserts itself. The C minor Pianoforte Concerto was first performed at a concert of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, with the composer as soloist, in 1901. Sibelius' First Symphony was written about two years before Rachmaninov's C minor Pianoforte Concerto, to which work it has a certain affinity as regards the Russian flavour of the thematic material, particularly in the last movement. Sibelius was thirty-four years of age when he conceived this symphony, and it shows an extraordinary grasp of classical symphonic style from which he afterwards gradually deviated, moulding for himself a style essentially his own.
(Continued overleaf.)