Relayed from The Queen's Hall, London
(Sole Lessees, Messrs. Chappell & Co., Ltd.)

B.B.C. Symphony Concert
Tonight at 8.15 Prokofiev
The B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Arthur Catterall) conducted by Sir Henry Wood

Orchestra
Overture, Oberon...Weber

Carl Maria von Weber was thirty-nine when he died in London of consumption. He had aggravated his disease and worn himself out, first by toiling at the composition of the opera, Oberon, which the Covent Garden authorities had commissioned from him, and, secondly, by conducting a series of performances of his operas at Covent Garden Theatre and a number of concerts in London, in fulfilment of his contract. He had entered into this contract, knowing his end was near, with the sole object of making provision for his family, for it was to bring in at least a thousand pounds.

Never was money more painfully earned. While still at home he wrote: 'My Oberon has to be finished by the winter. I am very ill, wretched beyond all words, and incapable of work of any kind.' He took it with him unfinished to London, and completed it there. He reported progress to his wife : I I gave myself leave to write to you only when I had finished my aria.... Now there's only a bit of the Overture, and one more opera will be brought to the birth. God grant it may be some good! I don't think much of it, for I like my music less and less every day.' But Oberon is far from being the work of a sick man, and the Overture is as virile a piece of music, for all its romantic flavour and delicate beauty, as has ever been composed.

Symphony No. 1 in A Flat...Elgar
Andante, allegro; Allegro motto; Adagio; Lento, allegro

Sir Edward Elgar had already composed his three great choral works, The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles, and The Kingdom, before he turned his thoughts to writing a symphony, and he had passed his fiftieth year when the work in A Flat had its first performance in Manchester, in December, 1908. It was conducted by Hans Richter, 'True artist and true friend,' in the terms of the dedication, and introduced by him to London. In a very short time it was heard in every city of musical importance in the world, and had reached its hundredth performance before year was out. This noble work established Elgar as a symphonic writer in the direct tradition. It was the first of a series of works in symphonic form composed by him during the next few years, a period marked by the majestic expenditure of his faculties as a mature artist. The Second Symphony, Falstaff, and the Violin Concerto belong to this period, and the steady flow was interrupted only by the War.

Part II: 9.35. Prokofiev and Orchestra
Concerto No. 3 in C, Op. 26, for Pianoforte and Orchestra...Prokofiev
Andante, allegro; Andantino, tema con variazioni; Allegro ma non troppo

As a young man of thirty Serge Prokofiev gained considerable reputation with an opera based on a fairy tale of Carlo Gozzi, called 'The Love for Three Oranges.' Gozzi was a satirist, and Prokofiev's grotesque music, with its complete repudiation of the romantic, was held to be admirably suited to the play by those to whom his music definitely appealed. But Prokofiev himself makes no attempt whatever to appeal to any section of an audience, certainly not to that larger part of it for whom music is essentially an emotional medium. He is content to present his music as a decorative pattern, much as the Cubists do their canvases, and the pattern is as angular and symmetrical. But there is in his rhythms an energy and a sense of purpose that impart to the listener a physical exhilaration that few are able to resist. Prokofiev, like his fellow countryman, Rachmaninov, is a pianist of the first rank, and appears frequently in Europe and America as a soloist, particularly as a brilliant interpreter of his own compositions.

Orchestra
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor Bach (orch. Klenovsky)

Bach was himself a highly skilled organ solo player, and he wrote a number of works for the instrument expressly to display his powers as a virtuoso. His principal concert organ works were written during the time he spent at Weimar, from where each autumn he toured the large German towns, giving recitals and astonishing his hearers with his brilliant playing. This Toccata, one of the most popular of all Bach's concert works, is also one of the most impressive. He was still a young man when he wrote it, probably round about thirty, and it marks, as Schweitzer says, 'the strong and ardent spirit finally realizing the laws of form.' It is full of fire and imagination, and both in structure and in substance it Iends itself admirably to orchestral colouring.