Leader, Philip Whiteway
Conductor, Walton O'Donnell
E. J. Moeran 's Symphony in Q minor was completed early in 1937 and was first performed at a Royal Philharmonic Concert in January 1938 under Leslie Heward , and later In the year it was again performed under Sir Henry Wood at a Promenade concert.
It is an entirely serious work, firm in stature but not unbending. In spirit it ranges from an extremely tender lyricism to a rugged, strongly rhythmical vitality. It says much for the constructive skill of the composer that the marked contrast between these extremes of mood never detracts from the continuity of each of the four movements.
Much of the symphony was written in Valencia Island, County Kerry, but do not imagine because of this that it is a descriptive fantasia on Irish folk songs masquerading under an ill-fitting symphonic cloak. Perhaps its material does smack of the countryside rather than of tram-lines and traffic-lights, but nevertheless it is a real symphony in manner as well as in name.