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SUZANNE BERTIN (Soprano)
THE GERSHOM PARKINGTON QUINTET
Selection, ' Tales of Hoffmann ' ...... Offenbach
OFFENBACH'S success as a composer of comic operas of that slight order for which we have no exact equivalent in this country was almost unique. His industry was also astonish. ing, and the number of successful works which he produced in his busy life is well nigh incredible. It was his ambition, however, to write at least one work of a rather more serious order,. and,he was at work on this Tales of Hoffmann when he died. It was completed by Guiraud, and produced in Paris in 1881, the year after its composer's death, and was given over a hundred times in that same year. It has over since been in the repertory in Paris, and is regularly played in most countries of Europe, even in our own.
Offenbach's music enjoyed an extraordinary vogue in this country in the latter part of last century, although, to any who know it at the fountain head, it inevitably loses something of its delicate flavour in crossing the Channel. None the less, Tales of Hoffmann bids fair to keep its hold on our affections, and, either as a whole opera or in part, is well known to the ordinary listener.
There is a Prologue in a wine cellar in which his friends twit Hoffmann, the poet, about his many love affairs, and each of the three acts is his recounting of one of them, always with an evil spirit at his elbow, somewhat after the manner of Mephistopheles in Faust.

BEST known both in his own country and abroad as the composer of a number of really beautiful songs, Reynaldo Hahn has composed much in the larger forms too-operas, ballets, and choral and orchestral music. His chamber music also has a real charm and individuality of its own. He is, moreover, a distinguished conductor, specializing in Mozart, and has ore now been selected to conduct a festival performance of Don Giovanni, at Salzburg. He was one of those who made his reputation at a very early age. He was only eleven when he entered the Paris Conservatoire, and his first published work appeared when he was fourteen.

Conducted by HUGH S. ROBERTON
Relayed from tho Queen's Hall
(Sole Lessees, Messrs. Chappell and Co., Ltd.)
I'art Songs: A LTHOUGH choral singing is widely cultivated throughout Scotland, and most towns boast their own choirs, it has always been to Glasgow rather than to the capital that the rest of the world has looked for Scottish choral singing. For many years the Glasgow Select Choir, of twenty-four voices, conducted by the late
John Millar Craig, held a foremost position in its own class. For a whole generation it furnished the annual St. Andrew's Day concerts in London and the other big English towns, to the enthusiastic delight of the exiled Scots there. The Glasgow Orpheus Choir has spread tho fame of Scottish choral singing much further afield, on the other side of the Atlantic as well as here. It reaches a very high standard of choral singing, and its conductor, Mr. Hugh S. Roberton, has earned the gratitude of audiences in many parts of the world, for the way in which his choir presents not only Scottish song and sentiment but vocal music of many orders.

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Conducted By:
Hugh S. Roberton

2LO London and 5XX Daventry

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About this data

This data is drawn from the Radio Times magazine between 1923 and 2009. It shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was subject to change and may not be accurate. More