(From Birmingham)
Hughes Macklin (Tenor)
Edna Iles (Pianoforte)
The Birmingham Military Band
Conducted by W. A. Clarke
Massenet (1842-1912) was a brilliant pupil of the Paris Conservatoire, winning the Rome Prize when he was twenty-one, and (after a period during which his music did not make great headway) beginning to win success when he was about thirty. From that time he had continual prosperity. He received the decoration of the Legion of Honour at thirty-four, and two years later he became a member of the Academy of Fine Arts - the youngest member ever elected.
Though he wrote some orchestral works, those are scarcely remembered save as the means by which he became known in the world of French Opera. His songs have kept in favour. Of the twenty-one Operas, not many have survived in England, but Manon was long popular at Covent Garden.
We are to hear the prelude from his music for Racine's tragedy of Phedra, which was produced in 1900. The Spanish Caprice is so well known that it is only necessary to recall that it consists of a number of contrasted sections, following one another without pause, thus: Alborada, Variations, Alborada (repeated), Scene and Gipsy Song, Fandango.
JEPHTHA, Captain of the Israelites, has vowed that if God gives him victory over the Ammonites, he will sacrifice whoever, on his return, comes first from his house to greet him. He conquers, and comes home, and to his horror, his daughter greets him before all the rest. She gladly bids him fulfil his vow, deeming the price small enough for Israel's freedom.
In this Recitative and Air Jephtha utters his sorrow, and prepares to offer up his daughter. rpCHAIKOVSKY himself explained that his Fourth Symphony has a ' programme.'
He brings into it Fate, representing by a recurring motif 'that inevitable force which checks our aspirations towards happiness,' as he puts it.
The FOURTH MOVEMENT is one of Tchaikovsky's loudest and rowdiest. Near the end of the Movement we hear the declamatory motif of Fate, menacingly thundered out.
