Conductors, Sir FREDERIC COWEN and Sir DAN GODFREY
ALBERT VOORSANGER (violin) (By permission of the Folkestone Corporation)
Relayed from
The Pavilion, Bournemouth
The Concerto was composed in 1920, and is in conventional three-movement form. There is no ultra modernism about the conception or the working out through the orchestration, and the treatment generally shows a thorough grasp of the opportunities that have been afforded to present-day composers by the recent enormous developments in the technique of writing for modern ears.
The first movement is vigorous and healthy in character. After a short introduction, the solo enters with the first subject and continues, also giving us the second tune (and, indeed, most of the development, too) until a short cadenza heralds in the return. A like device also gives us the recapitulation of the second subject, which works to a climax and finishes the movement with a brilliant statement of the vigorous material.
The slow movement is just a beautiful tune by the solo, accompanied in a sympathetic fashion on the orchestra.
The Finale betrays the country of the Composer's birth. Starting somewhat originally with a cadenza (marked 'Burlescamente'), it soon rushes into a semi-humorous Irish affair, which just bubbles along merrily, except for a respite in the way of a Pastoral-like second subject, until the brilliant end is reached.
(Founded on Longfellow's Poem)
(Conducted by THE COMPOSER)
This is the second performance of Sir Frederic Cowen's latest orchestral work, The Magic Goblet, which is founded on Longfellow's poem called 'The Luck of Edenhall'. This was the name given to a crystal drinking glass, for on its preservation was supposed to hang the fate of the house and its inmates. According to the legend it was the gift in bygone times of the Fountain Sprite who wrote on it, 'If this glass doth fall, Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall'. In the poem, which the composer has sought to depict in music, the young lord of Edenhall is holding drunken revelry in the banqueting hall with his retainers. In a fit of recklessness he proposes to try the truth of the Sprite's prophecy and calls for the magic goblet.
His faithful old servant, loth to disobey, takes slowly the glass from its cloth and in fear and trembling brings it to his master. A mystic purple light shines from it over all. Then says the young lord, ' 'Twas right a goblet the Fate should be of a joyous race like ours, so let us drink "Kling, Klang" to the Luck of Edenhall !' First it rings deep; then like the roar of a torrent, then dies away in mutterings. But still unconvinced, he smashes the goblet and, even as it breaks the foe rushes in, the place is set on fire and the guests are overcome and slain. On the morrow the old servant, alone and unharmed, seeks the body of his master who lies dead among the ruins, still holding in his hand the shattered remains of the fateful glass.
As famous symphonies go - and this is a very famous one - the New World Symphony is not so very old, and yet old enough to have established its right to the more or less fickle immortality which time bestows on works of art. By 1893, when it was composed, Brahms had finished writing symphonies, so nearly had Tschaikovsky, and as, with the exception of Elgar, it is difficult to point to anyone who has