Relayed to Daventry Experimental

National Orchestra of Wales

German's Rhapsody, first produced at the Cardiff Festival of 1904, is built in four sections, roughly corresponding to the four Movements of a Symphony, though it has not quite the close development of themes which generally characterizes such a work.
The March is the Last Movement of the Rhapsody. It is founded on The Men of Harlech, fragments of which tune are heard from here, there and everywhere in the Orchestra; then the whole tune is given out, still softly. The excitement is cleverly worked up, a subsidence for a few moments leading to a still bigger climax, when the whole Orchestra is soon glorying in the March. Then the pace quickens, and the end is reached in a magnificent outrush of triumphant joy.

J. Eddie Parry
An Interlude of Welsh Humour

Alwyn Jones
Penillion Singing on Welsh Traditional Airs

In his book of reminiscences: 'My Art and My Friends', Sir Frederick Cowen says of his 'Welsh' Symphony: 'I do not remember at the moment whether I gave it this title myself, but in any case it had a certain amount of Celtic flavour about it, and I expect its composition was not unconnected with the recollections of my rambles, my broken-down old piano, the hymn singing, and the honeymooners of two years before' (in the summer of 1882, when he had spent some weeks in Wales at a little country place called Tan-y-Bwlch).