Conductor, Horace Fellowes
Relayed from The Pavilion Gardens, Buxton
(North Regional Programme)
Le Rouet d'Omphale is a beautiful piece of tone painting based on the legend of Hercules enslaved by the Lydian Queen. But the composer warns us not to take its programme too literally, since tire subject is meant primarily to illustrate the seductiveness of woman and the struggle between weakness and strength.
A French critic has described the music in detail as follows : ' An arpeggio figure, alternating between the flute and the violins, soon leads to an orchestral illustration of the whir of the wheel, to which is supcradded a graceful theme in varied rhythms, of which the most original is the syncopated version, with its languorous accent. A broad melody in the basses, repeated in the different melodic progressions, the instrumentation becoming each time more powerful and highly coloured, expresses the anguish of the hen;, who cannot free himself from the wiles <-Omphalo and the same phrase in another rhythm becomes the lively derision which the coquettish queen expends upon her lover's fruitless efforts to get free. Tho principal theme now reappears, still in a skipping measure ; then the orchestra sinks to a pianissimo, and the opening arpeggio figure dies away with the movement of the wheel on the highest notes of the flutes and violins. No analysis can express the charm, freshness, suppleness, and variety of the orchestration, almost always kept within the limits of light colours and crystalline onorities.' .