Relayed from the Queen's Hall, London
Sir HENRY J. WOOD and his SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
Mme. AKSAROVA (Soprano)
FRANK TITTERTON (Tenor)
STEPHEN WEARING (Solo Pianoforte)
OPERA-COMPOSING usually comes fairly late in a country's musical development.
In Russia it came early, and Glinka, the pioneer of art music in that country, quite naturally went for the plots of his Operas to national fairy-lore, legend and history. Russian is based on one of the many quaintly extravagant, fantastic Russian fairy tales, about lordly humans. fairv folk, poets, dwarfs and such like. The Overture is a bright. energetic and straightforward prelude to their exciting doings.
MOZART'S funeral piece, written on the death of two well-known Freemasons in 1785. is based on a Gregorian psalm-tune. It wifl be remembered that Mozart, a strong Freemason, founded his Magic Flute on Masonic ideas.
ALMOST a hundred performances of this,
Symphony were given within a year of its production. It is dedicated to the great Conductor, Richter, and it was he who gave its first performance at one of the famous Manchester Halle Concerts nineteen years ago.
Since the end of the nineteenth century we have been led generally to expect some literary or pictorial basis for orchestral works, some ' programme ' or at least a descriptive title. Elgar has given us nothing beyond the suggestion that in it we see a Composer's outlook on life, and in the light of that interpretation this Symphony has always been considered highly personal. To most people it conveys a sense of spirituality, sometimes of longing, sometimes of consolation. There are four Movements.