(Leader, Paul Beard )
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite
The three works in this concert are all examples of occasional music, and in each case the occasion for which the music was written is to some extent typical of the age in which the composer lived., and its conception of the function of music.
Mozart, eighteenth-century musician-for-all-purposes, wrote his thirty-fifth Symphony for a social occasion, a festivity held in July 1782, at the house of Sigmund Haffner, a burgomaster of Salzburg.
Wagner, arch-romantic and egoist, wrote his ' Siegfried Idyll ' for an occasion of particular interest to himself; it was played on Christmas Day 1870, at his own home, as a birthday greeting to his wife, Cosima, and in honour of their son, Siegfried, who was born in the previous year. With Sibelius, we step straight into our own age, in which music has become more and more a matter of national importance; the Fifth Symphony was commissioned by the Finnish Government in celebration of the fiftieth birthday of the composer, who is regarded in his own country as a national hero. Deryck Cooke