Clifford Curzon (piano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Paul Beard )
Conducted by Rudolf Schwarz
Part 1
Tonight's concert opens with a work which Sir Arthur Bliss, who is now the Master of the Queen's Music, wrote for the Coronation Service in Westminster Abbey last June. 'Processional,' which is for full orchestra and organ, was played at the entry of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Wagner's 'Faust' Overture, completed in Paris in 1940 when he was twenty-seven, depicts with haunting impressiveness the longing, despairing and solitary Faust.'
The opening theme of Mozart's Piano Concerto in C minor (played at first by the strings and bassoons, with the oboes supplying the harmony from the eighth bar) has a kind of dark splendour; the soloist, when he enters, appears to muse or comment on what he has heard, and leads the way to a fluent and graceful second subject. The slow movement, marked Larghetto, possesses a tender simplicity, and a series of variations (on a plaintive, march-like theme) forms the finale. Harold Rutland

Processional - Bliss
8.11 app. A Faust Overture - Wagner
8.25 app. Piano Concerto No. 24. in C minor (K.491) - Mozart