Leader, BERTRAM Lewis
Conductor, RICHARD AUSTIN
MIROSLAV (violin)
Relayed from The Pavilion,
Bournemouth
Pushkin's ' Legend of Tsar Saltan ', on which Rimsky-Korsakov based his delightful, fantastic opera, is a sort of Russian salad of ' Cinderella ' and the Perseus legend.
The absurd, pompous Tsar Saltan , kind and cruel by turns, combines the rôles of Prince Charming and of the cruel king in the old Greek story, who turns his wife and child adrift in a floating barrel.
This concert suite consists of three of the orchestral preludes to the separate acts of the opera. The quaint march-theme of the first number is a delicious musical characterisation of Saltan himself. The second piece is a seascape : the barrel drifts along with the unfortunate Tsarevna and the baby Prince. The third paints the wonders of the country in which they land ; warriors who appear out of the waves, a singing squirrel that cracks golden nuts, a Princess lovelier than the moon (whom, of course, the Prince marries).
Joseph Holbrooke , who was one of the leading figures in the rapid development of the British school of composers during the first decade of the present century, began his orchestral tone poem ' Queen Mab ' in 1902 and finished it for the Leeds Festival in 1904. It is scored for a full modern orchestra and chorus (the latter being ad libitum), and is divided into four connected sections. The first three sections are i concerned with Mercutio's description of Queen Mab : (1) ' In shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the forefinger of an alderman', etc., (2) ' and in this state she gallops night by night; through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love', etc., (3) 'Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And dreams he of cutting foreign throats', etc.