From THE PHILHARMONIC HALL, LIVERPOOL
GIESEKING (Pianoforte)
THE LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC
. ORCHESTRA
Conducted by Sir THOMAS BEECHAM
Cherubini, born in 1760, had been writing operas from early manhood, right through the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, undisturbed by the seething passions of those troubled days. He owed one of his first appointments to the interest of Marie Antoinette 's coiffeur, while in ' The On hundred Davs ' of 1815 he received the Legion of Honour from tho hands of Napoleon. The opera Les Abencérages was composed by him in 1813 ; the subject is that of tho Moorish King, Boabdil, and his erring wife, and it ends with the massacre of the family of her betrayer. Cherubini was unfortunate in choosing the date for the première of his opera ; during the performance news was received of Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow.
Mozart wrote this symphony in his twenty-fourth year, while he was Konzertmeister and organist to the Court and Cathedral of Salzburg, and receiving a salary of £40 a year, a sum which would, in these days, be considered inadequate for a village organist. The symphony was first performed a year after it was written. Mozart, in a letter, mentions casually that the performance was a great success. Of course it was ! Success was about the only thing he made out of the majority of his compositions.