The Wireless Military Band, conducted by B. Walton O'Donnell
Marie Wilson (Violin)
The Sheffield Male Voice Choir, conducted by Mr. Arthur Butler
The Ruins of Athens was an indifferent play by Kotzebue, written for the opening of a theatre, for which Beethoven was asked to compose incidental music. We hear scarcely anything of this nowadays, except this Turkish March. It may be remarked that the chief work of ruination in Athens, the damage to the Parthenon, was wrought not by a Turkish, but by a Venetian explosive.
Berlioz had a white-hot imagination always ready to pour out brilliant ideas in the most grandiloquent way. Add to that the fact that he hart at his finger-tips an amazing knowledge of orchestration, and you may well expect that in this picture of A Roman Carnival, in the sixteenth century, he will make you see the gorgeous affair as vividly as he did when he wrote the Overture.
