(Leader, Laurance Turner )
Conductor, Sir John Barbirolli
Janet Craxton (oboe)
The Good Friday Music comes from the last Act of Parsifal. The scene is one of pastoral calm outside the hut of Gurnemanz, the aged guardian of the Grail. A strange knight appears in black armour. Gurnemanz tells him it is Good Friday and bids him lay aside his arms. The knight is then recognised as Parsifal, now returned as the Deliverer, having overcome Klingsor and regained the sacred spear. Gurnemanz anoints him King of the Grail while Kundry, now pemtent and set free from enchantment, washes the dust of his long wanderings ' from his feet. Parsifal baptizes her and gives her assurance of forgiveness. Most of the music that we hear is played while Parsifal gazes entranced at the beauty of the meadows and the flowers around him. Gumemanz tells him that this is the magic of Good Friday, when the earth appears at its loveliest, in gratitude to the Redeemer.
The pastoral note is also sounded in Vaughan Williams ' Oboe Concerto, though the general mood is lively. The work, written for Leon Goossens in 1944, comprises a ' Rondo Pastorale '; a Minuet and Musette suggesting ' Flora and the country green and a fast-moving Scherzo (with a slow epilogue) for finale.
It is not inappropriate today to recall that the last movement, the Passacaglia, of Brahms' Fourth Symphony is based on a variant of a theme used by Bach in his Cantata No. ISO, ' Lord for thee my spirit longs.* Harold Rutland