(Section E)
Led by Laurance Turner
Conducted by Boyd Neel
Overture, Alfonso and Estrella...... Schubert
Pavane for a dead Infanta...... Ravel
Wand of Youth, Suite No 1: 1. Overture; 2. Serenade; 3. Minuet (Old Style); 4. Sun Dance; 5. Fairy Pipers; 6. Slumber Scene; 7. Fairies and Giants...... Elgar
Ballet Music, Faust...... Gounod
Schubert's Alfonso and Estrella had no better luck than most of his operas. Written in 1822 when he was twenty-five, it had to wait till twenty-six years after his death for its first performance. The overture is full of typical Schubertian grace.
The Pavane for a dead Infanta was written first as a pianoforte piece and later scored—a common practice with Ravel. The Pavane is a very old dance, probably derived from Spain. Rabelais, writing in the sixteenth century, speaks of it as one of the 180 dances performed at the Court of the Queen of Lanternois. Essentially a stately dance associated with pomp and ceremonial occasions, it would consequently have been most appropriate as music for so solemn an occasion as the funeral rites of a Spanish Princess.
The first Wand of Youth Suite (the second was written very much later) is composed of music that Elgar wrote in 1869 for a children's play, when he was only twelve years old, and revised and scored for orchestra in his maturity. It was first played at a Queen's Hall Symphony Concert conducted by Sir Henry Wood in December 1907 and has ever since been one of the most popular of Elgar's lighter suites.