Conductor, Sir Dan Godfrey
George Chavchavadze (pianoforte)
Relayed from The Pavilion, Bournemouth
Symphony Concert No. 22 of the 39th Winter Series

The very nature of Liszt's Symphonic Poems implies a programme. He applied the music of this particular one in a manner somewhat autobiographical. He was about to marry, as he thought, the Princess Carolyne Sayne-Wittgenstein, a lady to whom he had been devoted for some six years, and he set about expressing the happy occasion in terms of music. Actually, the marriage never came off, but that does not affect the plan of the poem. The music contains idealised portraits both of himself and of his Polish Princess, but otherwise, the whole design is very simple, and is concerned with the feelings of the happy pair and joy in anticipation. As a matter of fact, it might well be the first movement of a symphony, so little is the design of the music affected by its programme.