Relayed from the Assembly Room, City Hall
National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)
Leader, Albert Voorsanger
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite

In Bach's day there were a number of little Courts in Europe, many of which maintained their own bodies of musicians. The servants in a Royal household were often capable of taking part in orchestral or chamber music, and, with one or two more highly-skilled players, formed an orchestra which could deal with most of the music of the day. At the Court of Meiningen, long celebrated as a centre where the best music was zealously cultivated, the Director of music was a member of Bach's family, and on one occasion when the great Johann Sebastian was visiting him, the Markgraf Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg was there as a guest of the Court. Like the Meiningen family, the Brandenburgs were warm admirers of Bach's music, and it is thought that this meeting was the occasion for the composition of the six Concertos which Bach afterwards dedicated to the Markgraf.
The third is for strings alone, violins, violas, and violoncellos, each in three parts, along with the usual basses and the cembalo (or harpsichord) part, whose player filled up the harmonies from a figured bass. There are only two movements, the first a big and energetic Allegro and the other also hurrying along at great speed and with the same sense of bustling cheerfulness and good humour.

Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf enjoyed so enviable a reputation in his own day, alike as violinist and as composer, that the comparative neglect into which his music has fallen is as difficult to understand as it is undeserved. He enjoyed the friendship of such giants in music as Haydn and Gluck, and was accepted by his colleagues and by the public of his time as a worthy contemporary of even such great men in the art. His career was as happy as it was busy, and, though he was a man of more accomplishments than the artist may usually claim, he devoted himself to his playing and to composition with so whole-hearted an enthusiasm as to leave behind him a great volume of music for orchestra and for various chamber music combinations. In many ways it is like Haydn's, particularly like Haydn's more light-hearted pieces, showing much of the same graceful, happy gift of melody, and something of the same buoyant good spirits. It does not often touch any very deep or profound sentiment, but it is all, so far as we know it today, thoroughly well-built music, rich in spontaneous tunefulness, and in most of the qualities that ought to have made for enduring fame.
Arnold Trowell, who has arranged the work to be played this evening, for the instrument of which he is himself so thoroughly equipped a master, has already done a good deal to enrich its somewhat scanty repertoire. He has given us purely orchestral music, moreover, of an order which entitles him to a distinguished place among present-day British composers.

(Violin Obbligato, Albert Voorsanger)

'L'Amero' comes from a little Dramatic Cantata by Mozart in which there are only three characters-the King of Macedonia, a Shepherd, and a Shepherdess. The music was written for a State visit which the Arch-Duke Maximilian paid to Salzburg, Mozart's native town, in 1755, when a gala performance at the State Theatre was given in his honour. Mozart was only nineteen when he composed it; it is significant of the early age at which ho won a foremost position that he should have been commissioned to compose a work for such an occasion before he was out of his teens.
This little air is sung by the Shepherdess, telling how she will always love her Shepherd faithfully. It is very simple, and full of Mozart's inimitable charm. There is a violin obbligato, and the voice and the instrument imitate each other in the most light-hearted way.