BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Paul Beard )
Conductor, Sir Adrian Boult
From the Royal Albert Hall. London
Parti
God Save the King
' It's meant to represent the joy of the whole world,' said Elgar once in an exultant mood after conducting ' Falstaff.' And certainly the work is a portrait of a man in love with life; in spite of his faults, which are there for all to see, he is warm-hearted, witty (and the cause of wit in other men), a knight, a gentleman and a soldier,' a Elgar always insisted. He was also careful to point out that his Symphonic Study was a musical picture of the Falstaff of the historical plays, not the simple figure of fun in The Merry Wives of Windsor,
The work flows along, absorbing and at the same time transmuting the richness of its material. At the opening Falstaff is portrayed ' in a green old age, mellow, gay, corpulent, and unprincipled '; and the scene is an apartment of the Prince, who escapes from the coldness and convention of his father's court to the teeming life of the London streets and the tavern where Falstaff is monarch. There follow midnight exploits at Gad's Hill, Falstaff's march with his ' scarecrow army ' and the return through Gloucestershire, the crowning and progress of the new King, the repudiation of Falstaff, and his death, when he babbled of green fields.'
In the course of the study there are two
Interludes for small orchestra. In the first, Sir John, asleep behind the arras in the tavern at Eastcheap, dreams of his boyhood when he was page to Thomas Mowbray , Duke of Norfolk. The second takes place in Justice Shallow's orchard in Gloucestershire.
Harold Rutland