Conductor,
B. WALTON O'DONNELL
THORPE BATES (baritone) ALEC ROWLEY , who even now is no great age, was a very brilliant Royal Academy student; he entered when he was fifteen as an organ scholar, and so spirited were his methods of advancing his education that by the time he was twenty-one he had taken no fewer than forty examinations, including those for the L.R.A.M., A.R.A.M., and F.R.C.O. In addition he collected as many medals as an Olympic runner has cups. As a teacher he has been Rrofessor and Examiner at Trinity College, London. As a composer, riot only adults but children know his works, and play them with pleasure; indeed, he is a gifted composer of music for the young. That, of course, is not the limit of his powers; he wrote a mime play for which he received a Carnegie Award, and he has also written chamber music and music for full orchestra.
HUBERT BATH was a pupil of the Royal
Academy of Music, where he won the Goring Thomas Scholarship for composition. He had considerable experience as an operatic conductor, touring both with the Quinlan Opera Company and with the Royal Carl Rosa Company; for a number of years he was in charge of the opera class at the Guildhall
School of Music, and has been adviser in music to the London County Council. His published works include a number of important symphonic pieces, as well as more than one opera. London listeners will remember the success of Young England written in collaboration with G. H. Clutsam, which had a successful run at Daly's Theatre in 1915 and at Drury Lane in the following year. One of his operas has been given in Milan. He is no less successful in music of a lighter order ; all of it is thoroughly sound in craftsmanship, and melodious and graceful in style.
The popular and fascinating Cantata, The Wedding of Shon Maclean, from which this selection is drawn, is, although one of the breeziest of many jolly Cantatas written in recent years, a thoroughly musicianly work, and, of course, all the better for the fact that a rich humour pervades both the text and the music.