FRANK TITTERTON (Tenor)
THE B.B.C. LIGHT ORCHESTRA
Conducted by JOSEPH Lewis
VON SUPPÉ'S name is best remembered in this country by three or four overtures of which Poet and Peasant, Light Cavalry, and Morning, Noon and Night enjoy an unfading popularity. Poet and Peasant, especially, is known in many guises, and one publishing firm alone has arrangements of it for no fewer than fifty-nine different combinations of instruments. In the course of his busy life Von Suppe composed, according to one authority, 165 light pieces for the stage, as well as bigger and more important works, including two Grand Operas, a Mass, and a Requiem, and that list takes no account of such early work as another Mass which was performed when he was only fifteen.
A number of his light operas were given in London towards the end of last century, but it is now almost solely by such shorter pieces as this bright and melodious overture that we know him.
IN his 79th year Sir Frederic Cowen can look back on a very busy career, in the course of which he has done more for British music than could possibly be set down in one of these columns. From his eleventh year, when he gave his first pianoforte recital, until, not very long ago, he retired to at least partial and very well-earned quietude, he has been ceaselessly active in the best interests of music as a whole, and especially of the music of his own country. For many years one of tho foremost conductors of the day, he has had charge of the classical nights at the old Proms in Covent Garden, sharing these with Sir Arthur Sullivan. Then, in 1888, the year in which he was appointed conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Society, he went to Melbourne, and for six months conducted an orchestral concert every day at the Centennial Exhibition there. Sir Frederic has been conductor, too, of the Halle Orchestra, the Liverpool Philharmonic, the Bradford Permanent Orchestra, the Scottish Orchestra, the Handel Festivals, besides several of the big provincial festivals, and there, too, he has given every encouragement to his fellow-countrymen. The list of his own music is an imposing one, including, as it does, four operas, as well as many smaller stage pieces, oratorios, cantatas, symphonies, overtures, concertos and shorter pieces and songs.