and Weather Forecast

A programme of recent records

and Weather Forecast

John Betjeman introduces the seventh in a series of eleven weekly programmes
All Saints' Church, Margaret Street , London
Choir of All Saints' Church
Organist and Choirmaster: Michael Fleming

A record request programme

played by Stefan Askenase
Grande valse brillante in E flat major, Op. 18
Trois valses brillantes, Op. 34 (A flat major; A minor; F major)
Waltz in A flat major, Op. 42
Three Waltzes, Op. 64 (D flat major; C sharp minor; A flat major)
Two Waltzes, Op. 69 (A flat major; B minor)
Three Waltzes, Op. 70 (G flat major; F minor; D flat major)
Waltz in E minor, Op. posth.
Eleventh in a weekly series
Yonty Solomon

Gramophone records

Igor Ozim (violin)
Ernest Lush (piano)
First broadcast performance in this country

Sonata in F major - Drnrak
Sonata - Janacek
Sonata (1944) - Mariyan Lipovsek

A comic opera in one act
Music by Elizabeth Maconchy
Libretto by Ursula Vaughan Williams based on the novel "Le sola" by Crebillon (fils)
First broadcast performance
Irwell Chamber Orchestra
Leader: Suzanne Rozsa
Conducted by Joseph Horowitz
The scene is set in the Prince's residence in Paris, c. 1830
A recording of the 1967 Camden Festival production

From the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Played by the Vlach String Quartet: Josef Vlach (violin), Vaclav Snitil (violin), Josef Kodousek (viola), Viktor Moucka (cello)
Part 1
Quartet in C major, Op. 59 No. 3
3.40 The Concert Interval
Denis Matthews discusses Beethoven and the String Quartet
4.0* Beethoven
Part 2
Quartet in A minor, Op. 132
The first of nine public concerts promoted by the BBC Music Programme, devoted to the quartets and violin sonatas of Beethoven
November 5. Tatrai String Quartet

Beethoven Quartets in the Queen Elizabeth Hall
There is nothing like them in the history of music - a proposition which, I think, is true thrice over:
3.0
1. If you were a good musician who, for some unfortunate reason, had never been in touch with Beethoven's music, and if you heard one of the first (Op. 18) quartets together with one of the last (Op. 127-135), you would be unable to guess that they were by the same composer. True, you would hear affinities and ' influences'; but you would think that one composer has influenced another, much later one. The span of Beethoven's development is, in fact, unprecedented and has remained unequalled.
2. Mozart quite often repeated himself, Haydn rarely did. Beethoven would rather not have written a quartet than repeat himself in any respect - rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, textural, structural. Each work is a well-designed contrast to the last, even where the last lies many years back. As a result, the better you get to know the quartets, the more they become a single work - not because they are so similar, but because they are so logically different.
3. My third point is, strictly speaking, a secret. The metaphysical substance of the late quartets opens up a field of musical expression half-closed even to the greatest composers before and after Beethoven. Am I being vague? A secret isn't something which shouldn't be told, but something which can't. Except, of course, by the music itself, which can, perhaps. teach our age what religious experience is about.
Hans Keller

Alan Jones (baritone)
Robert Spencer (tenor, theorbo lute, and guitar)

Henry Lawes -
Bid me but live
I prithee send me back my heart
A complaint against Cupid
Go, lovely rose
Sabrina fair
'Tis wine that inspires
'Tis Christmas now
The angler's song
When I adore thee
A willow garland

William Lawes -
Why so pale and wan fond lover
Still to be neat
Amarillis, tear thy hair
Introduced by Robert Spencer

by Anthony Thwaite
Mr. Thwaite has recently returned after a two-year stay in North Africa, where he taught English at the University of Libya in Benghazi. He describes something of the effect of the Arab-Israel war on a country which because of its history and its uncertain unity has special problems.

Romantic Suite in E major, Op. 125 transcribed for chamber ensemble by Schoenberg
Patricia Lynden (flute) Keith Puddy (clarinet) Sydney Mann (violin) Diana Cummings (violin) Paul Collins (violin) Harry Danks (Viola) Jennifer Ward Clarke (cello) John Steer (double-bass) Susan Bradshaw and Susan McGaw (harmonium duet) Thomas Rajna and Michael Pilkington (piano duet) Conducted by Jacques-Louis Monod

La Fianza Satisfecha by Lope de Vega 1562-1635
Translated for broadcasting by JOE BURROUGHS
La Fianza Satisfccha was lately produced at the National Theatre in a free translation by John Osborne under the title A Bond Honoured. This translation of the original text differs both in context and implication from Mr. Osborne's version.
Scene: Sicily, then Tunisia
Time: Renaissance
Produced by JOE BURROUGHS
Third broadcast followed by an interlude at 7.55

at the Berlin Festival
BBC Symphony Orchestra Leader, Trevor Williams
Conductor, Colin Davis
Part 1

Svetlana Alliluveva 's
Twenty Letters to a Friend
† reviewed by JOHN KEEP
Dr. Keep feels that the much-heralded book by Stalin's daughter is no mere apologia but a persuasive affirmation of conscience.

Part 2
Concerto for Orchestra. Gerhard

A study of Anton Chekhov by Louis MacNeice
with Alec McCowen as Anton Chekhov and Barbara Jefford as Olga Knipper

A description, from the viewpoint of the last day in Chekhov's life, of highlights in that life, remembered in a series of flashbacks: short, half-finished scenes which melt into the cruel present - Badenweiler, the eternal brass band, and the dying Chekhov. ironic and self-aware to the last moment.

A new production of the programme first broadcast in 1941: second broadcast

(Barbara Jefford Is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company)

Davidsbiindlertanze
GEZA ANDA (piano)
gramophone record