(From Birmingham)
THE BIRMINGHAM STUDIO AUGMENTED
ORCHESTRA
Leader, FRANK CANTELL
Conducted by JOSEPH LEWIS
BORN in Greenock in 1868, Hamish MacCunn was one of the original students of the Royal
College of Music, gaining a scholarship for composition, on its opening. While still a student, he had an Overture performed at the Crystal Palace Concerts which at onco made it clear that he was a young composer with a new and strongly individual message. The work to be played this evening appeared when he was only twenty-one and did even more to spread his fame.
There are two main tunes, the first of which is played at the beginning by the violoncellos ; the second is one of those flowing tunes which one does not forget easily after hearing it, and though they are both used with real skill to build up a fine piece of concert music in orthodox form, it is their fresh and natural melody which has won for the Overture its enduring popularity.
Tom PICKERING (Tenor) and Orchestra
ONE of the outstanding personalities of our age, Paderewski has shown himself to be a leader of his fellows not only as an artist, but as a statesman of broad-minded and enlightened views, as well as devoted, self-sacrificing patriotism. The way in which he set the Polish Republic on its feet, bringing the opposing political parties into line by his own strength of character and commanding leadership, will be recorded in histories of our time as surely as his great gifts as a musician.
The pianoforte Concerto, Op. 17, shows his enthusiasm for the characteristic music of his native Poland.