From Birmingham
THE BIRMINGHAM STUDIO AUGMENTED
ORCHESTRA
(Leader, FRANK CANTELL )
Conducted by JOSEPH LEWIS
THE young knight, Walter von Stolzing, has applied for admission to the Guild of Mastersingers. His test-song displeases them, and he is rejected; but one Mastersinger, the cobbler-poet, Hans Sachs , has seen beauty in it. That evening as he sits outside his shop at his work (in Act 11) his car is haunted by a sweet refrain from Walter's song, a snatch of beauty which he cannot grasp, or elude. Between his music on this song and his distracted attempts to work he idles away a delicious five minutes.
THE Second Movement of the Concerto has a theme suggestive of some of the composer's ' Songs without Words.' This is accompanied merely by soft Strings.
There is a middle section in which the Solo Violin and Strings and Woodwind discuss a little agitated phrase, the Solo part in particular becoming very florid.
A gradual dying-away brings back the main tune, and the Movement closes very softly.
IN the fifth Canto of Dante's
Inferno we are told of the poet s arrival at a dreadful place 'mute of all light,' where rages ' the infernal hurricane that never rests.' Here he meets Francesca, who relates her tragic story.
She, the wife of Giovanni Malatesta , Lord of Rimini, was loved by his brother Paolo. Malatesta finding tho lovers together, murdered them, For their sin they are condemned to drift for evei in the desolate second circle of the Inferno.
Tchaikovsky, in the opening of his tone-poem, depicts the gloom of that terrible place of ' Hell's Whirlwind.' Later we hear, on the Clarinet, the pathetic, tender melody of Franceses. After the second appearance of this melody a climax seems to suggest the lovers' tragedy, culminating in their death and punishment.