(In co-operation with the Belfast Corporation)
Relayed from the Municipal Museum and Art Gallery
THE HARMONY
MIXED VOICE QUARTET THE BELFAST WIRELESS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
(Leader, PHILIP WHITEWAY)
Conductor, E. GODFREY BROWN
LYOF KNIPPER is a brilliant young Russian composer, some of whose work has been heard already by listeners. He holds a high musical position in the Soviet administration, particularly as official composer in the Moscow State Opera. In his idiom and orchestration he appears to have affinity with Stravinsky and, in some respects, with Schonberg. He has composed three symphonies, one of them based on songs of the Red Army, and about ten suites, several inspired by the adventures of the same mediaeval rogue, Till Eulenspiegel that inspired Richard Strauss , and others based on folk music collected in that region of Southern Asia lying north of the Pamir Mountains.
THE BERWALD FAMILY, a large one, was musically important in Stockholm in the first half of last century. Two members stood out above the others-
Johann, a violinist, who was famous all over Europe at the age of ten, and had three daughters, all singers of repute ; and Franz Adolf , Johann's nephew, the composer of this symphony. Berwald was born in Stockholm in 1796, and in his youth went to Vienna, acquiring some reputation as a composer, and even having an opera performed. He might have had a like early success in Stockholm if his uncle, now become Kapellmeister, had been a better conductor, and he was past fifty before his native city had got his true measure. The best known of his symphonies, the G minor. was, for example, badly received on its first performance in 1843. The symphony now to be performed dates from 1845. Berwald spent the last twenty years of his life in Sweden and became a considerable figure, dying in 1868.