Conductor,
B. WALTON O'DONNELL
OWEN BRYNGWYN (baritone)
THE leading composers have until quite recently neglected the Military Band, as though so popular a medium were unworthy of their best ideas. Times are changing, and more and more the great composers are realising that the band is in every way as well adapted for presenting their music as the concert orchestra may do. Gustav Holst is among the few modem British musicians who have given the military band a fair share of their best work, composing, among other music,' two vigorous and thoroughly popular Suites for it. The second one is largely based on folk tunes, and the only further point of interest for listeners is that the two tunes which are so cunningly welded together in the last movement are the ones which Hoist uses in the same way in St. Paul's Suite for Strings. The first movement is a March, in which three tunes are used-a Morris Dance from Cecil Sharp 's Collection, 'Swansea Town', and ' Claudy Banks '. The second is a song without words, on the tune ' I'll love my love ', and the third is ' The Song of the Blacksmith '. All four of these tunes were collected by the late Dr. G. B. Gardiner in Hampshire. The last movement is a Fantasy,