Conductor,
Sir DAN GODFREY
MAURICE EISENBERG
(violoncello)
Relayed from
The Pavilion, Bournemouth THIS WORK, op. 108, was composed at St. Cloude-Jura in 1931 and is dedir cated to Pau Casals. It was given a first performance in Paris by Maurice Eisenberg with the Pasdeloup Orchestra, conducted by Glazounov, on October 14, 1933. Alexandre Glazounov is within eighteen months of his seventieth birthday. He has lived through the greater part of the most glorious period in Russian musical history, having been born a few years after the death of Glinka, the ' Prophet-Patriarch ' of Russian music (as Liszt called him). Glazounov has known and worked with every one of the famous Russian composers from Balakirev to Stravinsky. BORODIN'S second symphony is, like practically all his work, frankly programme music. Not that the symphonic nature of the work is affected, but, on the composer's own confession, he had definite pictures in mind. Much of the work has that effect of portraying barbaric splendour in the manner which so many of the Russian composers could assume so effectively. It is not difficult, for example, to associate the heroic themes in the first movement' with a procession of the old Russian Princes and warriors of a remote Russia. Similarly, the third, the slow, movement invokes a picture of Slavonic minstrels, softening with their art the most uncouth amongst their audience, while the Finale paints a striking picture of a banquet spread for heroes.