Leader, George Stratton
Conductor,
Benjamin Haigh Marshall
Evelyn Rothwell (oboe)
ORCHESTRA
Benjamin Haigh Marshall , the conductor, studied at the Royal Academy of Music. As a student, he formed a small string orchestra to provide incidental music to the dramatic performances. The venture proved so successful that it was enlarged and formed into a permanent professional combination, all the players being drawn from among the young professionals who, like himself, were just beginning their careers. The average age of the orchestra is twenty-three.
10.18 EVELYN ROTHWELL AND
ORCHESTRA
A. S. Arensky (1861-1906), one of the most interesting of minor Russian composers, is known in England chiefly by his pleasant, lyrical chamber music and by his polished miniatures for piano. Though a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, his work is not very remarkable for national flavouring.
The ' Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky', in its original form, was scored for violin, viola, and two cellos, a combination producing a suitably elegaic tone colour. It was rearranged for the normal quartet as a more practical ensemble, and was later arranged for string orchestra. The theme is taken from Tchaikovsky's beautiful song, ' Legend ' (' Christ in His Garden ').