ALICE MOXON (Soprano)
LESLIE ENGLAND (Pianoforte)
THE WIRELESS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, conducted by JOHN ANSELL MOZART'S last Opera., The Magic Flute, has one of the strangest plots possible, and one of the most delightful scores. It conforms to the popular theatrical taste of the time (the end of the 18th century), combining the fantastic, the exotic and the comic. Most important of all its ingredients, however, is Free- masonry, which was arousing great enthusiasm at that time, and which supplies the serious foundation underlying the Opera's fanciful plot. Both librettist and Composer were Freemasons.
There is much elaborate ceremonial in the Opera, and we hear suggestions of this in the impressive Introduction to the Overture. Apart from this, the Overture bowls along happily in ' fugal' style, one instrument after another taking up a lively tune. There is just one interruption, when some solemn chords recall the ceremonial side of the work.
WHEN the Englishman wishes to help a worthy cause he gets up a public dinner or a public concert. Thus lie can promise his supporters a present pleasure to themselves with a later benefit to others : they are to dine handsomely that the poor may be fed, or to enjoy the encouragement of good music that assistance may bo secured for those who need it. And as it is in this country to-day, so it is in other countries, and so it has been in other times. Beethoven's immortal Seventh Symphony had its first performance in such circumstances-at a concert given in Vienna in 1813 for the benefit of soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau (where Napoleon defeated the Austrians and Bavarians).
SECOND MOVEMENT. (Allegretto-At a moderate, cheerful pace.) The First Main Tune, in a minor key, is solemn and touching. It is not difficult to imagine how the thoughts of the audience at the first performance turned to the wounded and to those bereaved. A consoling major melody soon enters, and with alternations of sorrow and hope the Movement proceeds.
THIRD MOVEMENT. (Presto-Very Quick.)
Every thought of sadness is wafted away in a trice. The reaction is violent but delightful.
The Movement is a Scherzo with a contrasting Trio, arranged Scherzo - Trio - Scherzo - Trio-Scherzo. The Wind instruments' tune in the Trio is a pilgrim's hymn in common use in Lower Austria in Beethoven's day, and perhaps still known there.

The Choric Song by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Set to Music for Soprano Solo, Chorus and Orchestra, by C. Hubert Parry
Alice Moxon, The Wireless Symphony Orchestra, and The Wireless Chorus, conducted by Stanford Robinson

Ulysses in his wanderings came to a certain district in which the lotos tree grew abundantly. The drugging sweetness of its fruit so worked upon his companions that they lost the desire to return home, and wanted nothing but to enjoy the delicious languor that they thus experienced.
Tennyson, in this 'Choric Song,' gives beautiful expression to their feeling, and describes the lovely scenes upon which they gazed. There are eight sections in the Song (lines from which are often quoted).
1. It opens in three-part chorus, with
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass...
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes....
II.
Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consum'd with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
Here a fourth part (the Bass) is added to the Chorus, and the music, with a change of key, becomes more animated.
III. This opens with a Soprano Solo, at the words
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch....
IV.
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labour be? Let us alone....
The Chorus, in more agitated mood, declaims thus; then the music becomes calmer, and we pass to
V. Soprano Solo
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream
With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream.
VI. Men's voices only
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives..... but all liatli suffer'd change.
For surely now our household hearths are cold...
Let what is broken so remain.
VII. Soprano Solo
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)...
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill....
VIII. Chorus
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak We have had enough of action.... Let us swear an oath...
In the hollow Lotus-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind....
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

'The Diamond Jubilee of Mary Jones.'

relayed from the Church of Our Lady of Victories, Kensington
Scripture Reading, Matthew xi., 2-10
Rorate Coeli (Plain Chant)
Sermon by the Very Rev. Canon Thomas Carey, Canon of Westminster Cathedral and Rector of Our Lady of Victories, Kensington
(Mr. Joseph Wardle, Organist and Choirmaster)

Appeal by the Rt. Hon. T. P. O'Connor, M.P.

The Queen's Hospital for Children, in Bethnal Green (formerly known as the North-Eastern Hospital for Children) is, like so many other deserving institutions, threatened with a crippling curtailment of its activities owing to lack of funds. Unless it is able to raise £20.000, two wards, containing sixty-two beds, will have to be closed at the end of the present year. In addition to the valuable work that the Hospital does on the spot for the sick children of North-East London, it maintains a seaside branch at Bexhill-on-Sea.

Mr. T. P. O'Connor, who makes the appeal, is the Father of the House of Commons (where he has sat since 1880, and represented the Scotland Division of Liverpool continuously since 1885), and one of the veterans of Fleet Street. Amongst the papers of which he was the founder and first editor are the Star, the Sim, M.A.P. and T. P.'s Weekly.

The address to which donations should be sent is [address removed]

Local Announcements

relayed from the Hotel Victoria

Emilio Colombo is a truly cosmopolitan musician. Born in Italy, he toured with his father's orchestra all over Europe, and it was at St. Petersburg - as it was then - that he met Tchaikovsky, who took a great interest in the beginnings of his musical career. He received his musical education at Brussels, under the great Professor Thomson, and later he won the gold medal of the Royal Conservatoire at Liege. He then toured Europe on his own account, and again found his way to St. Petersburg, where he attained the summit of musical success by being appointed violinist to the Tsar. His first concert was held to celebrate the 300th year of the Romanov Dynasty. But the doom of the Romanovs was even then sealed, and, with his violin as his only possession, Colombo fled before the Revolution, playing his way across Siberia, through Japan - where he played to the Imperial Family - and Canada, to England. Much as Colombo loves playing to English audiences, he has confessed that one of his most moving experiences - being, as it was, a poignant reminder of old days - came when he was invited to play to the King and Queen of Italy when they entertained our own King and Queen at the Italian Embassy; an event of which he possesses a treasured memento - the Cross of the Cavaliere d'Italia.