(Leader, Reginald Whitehouse )
Conductor, Maurice Miles
Shulamith Shafir
(piano)
From the Town Hall, Leeds
Brahms' Second Symphony was the means of effecting a reconciliation between the composer and his native city of Hamburg. In 1862 he had been passed over as a prospective conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic Society in favour of his friend Stockhausen; and this rebuff caused him eventually to leave the city and take up residence in Vienna, where his Second Symphony was given for the first time in 1877. But when he conducted the work at Hamburg in the following year, at the fiftieth anniversary of the Philharmonic Society (with Joachim as leader of the orchestra), he was accorded so great an ovation that all past injuries were forgotten. Written at Portschach, a village by the Worthersee in the Austrian Alps, the Symphony (to quote the words of a friend of Brahms) is ' all rippling streams. blue sky, sunshine, and cool green shadows. How beautiful it must be at Portschach! '
In Arthur Bliss ' Piano Concerto there are memorable themes, captivating rhythms, colourful orchestration, and a particularly brilliant part for the soloist. The work is dedicated to the people of the U.S.A. It was commissioned by the British Council for the British Week at the New York World's Fair in 1939, and first performed in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult , with Solomon as the soloist.
It is designed on a gigantic scale.
Tremendously exciting, with heartening melodies and an expressive slow movement, it has the incisive rhythms, the colour, and the sense of movement that have made Arthur Bliss so successful a composer of music for the ballet.