(Leader, J. Mouland Begbie )
Conducted by Julian Clifford
Edmund Matthews , who studied at Marlborough and Oxford, has written a number of works for orchestra, including an overture ' The Queen of Ithaca which was broadcast last November. He wrote his Symphonic Rhapsody in 1945 to celebrate the Allied victory, his intention being to give the impression of a conflict and its resolution in the form of a sinfonietta in one movement. From one of the themes heard early in the work, a fugue subject is evolved; the fugue reaches a climax in a chorale, which in the final section appears in augmented form in combination with the other principal themes.
Deryck Cooke