conducts the BBC Theatre Orchestra
Elgar's ' Wand of Youth ' Suites are composed of music that Elgar wrote for a children's play, and revised and scored for orchestra in his maturity. Elgar has told us that ' Some small grievances occasioned by the imaginary despotic rule of my father and mother (the Two Old People) led to the devising of " The Wand of Youth." The scene was a woodland glade intersected by a brook. The hither side of this was our fairyland. Beyond, small and distant, was the ordinary life which we forgot as often as possible. The characters, on crossing the stream, entered fairyland and were transformed.'