BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Paul Beard )
Conducted by Franz- Andre
Franz-Andre, who is chief conductor of the Belgian Radio Orchestra, begins his programme ton.gtht with the Overture to one of the most successful operas of the Belgian composer Grctry; it was first given in Paris in 1769 and frequently revived. Leclair, the jiext composer represented, was French, and born in 1697, forty-five years before Gretry.
As to * Scheherazade,' although the music owes its origin to the desire to write an instrumertal work on certain episodes from the Arabian Nights Entertainments, Rimsky-Korsakov was careful to explain that the themes were purely musical material, used for symphonic development and spread over all four movements of the suite, alternating and interwining wiith each other.
Harold Rutland