The Wireless Orchestra
(Leader, S. KNEALE-KELLEY)
Conducted by JOHN ANSELL
RACHEL MORTON (Soprano) ROBERT BURNETT (Baritone)
When the University of Breslau made Brahms a Doctor of Philosophy he composed, as a graceful recognition of the honour, this Overture, building it out of the tunes of several popular students' songs. First we hear two tunes of Brahms' own composition and then appears the hymn-like melody of The Stately Home; next, the air of the song called The Father of his country; then the Freshman's Song, blurted out on Bassoons, and, lastly, Gaudeamus igitur.
3.42 RACHEL MORTON and Orchestra
Selected Items
In 1898, Elgar was asked to write a work for an important Festival. He was too busy to do so, and suggested that Coleridge-Taylor should be asked. The result was this Ballad, which helped to make the name of the young Composer, then only twenty-three.
The work begins with a roughly energetic introductory Theme on the Strings. Woodwind has the First Main Tune, Strings accompanying.
The opening matter having been repeated, an episode (starting with a lengthened form of the First Main Tune, on the Trumpet), leads to tho Second Main Theme (Muted Violins and Violas).
On this material the Ballad is built up. Though it has no actual story behind it, one can easily imagine it as a musical commentary on some old chivalric tale of love and warfare.
THIS scena comes from the last part of Coleridge-Taylor's setting of Longfellow's
Song of Hiawatha. lagoo, the wandering boaster, tells the Indians what he has seen - the coming of a great canoe holding a hundred warriors, with white faces. Most people laugh at lagoo's story, but Hiawatha knows better. True is all lagoo tells us,' he declares, 'I have seen it in a vision.'
4.30 RACHEL MORTON
Selected Items
The hero, Hercules, as a penance for a crime, had to hire himself out for three years. He took service with Omphale, Queen of Lydia, and worked at her side amongst the women - in so uncouth a manner as to win him many a blow. In this 'Symphonic Poem' you may bear the whirl of the wheels, the derision of the Queen and the sorrow of the enslaved hero.
The Scherzo reminds us that Dvorak, the son of a butcher-innkeeper, never lost his love of peasant ways. There is something here of the countryman's boisterous good humour, we might say almost of the horse-play variety.
The Last Movement is forceful and dramatic. It opens with a few bars' Introduction, and then the Brass boldly gives out the First Main Tune; this is dealt with for a few moments before the Clarinets have the Second Main Tune. As the Movement goes on we hear tunes from each of the three previous Movements.
