(From Birmingham)
The City of Birmingham Police Band
Conducted by Richard Wassell
Scottish listeners will not need to be told who Hamish MacCunn was. but some mereà Southrons may care to be informed that he was a Greenock man, who for some years was in London, first studying at. and then on the staff of, our Royal College of Music.
He wrote this Overture when he was still a Royal College student, inspired by that Canto of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel which opens
'O Caledonia, stern and wild.
Fit nurse for a poetic child.'
SVENDSEN, who died a few years before the war, was a violinist-conductor composer, and wrote several largo-scale compositions, including two Symphonies. He is less of a nationalist' composer than his contemporary, Grieg. In such pieces as this Norwegian Artists' Carnival, however, the spirit of his native country is happily present. This, and the four Norwegian Rhapsodies by which he is well known. belong to his earlier years of residence in Christiania. He was conductor of its Musical Association when he was in the mid-thirties. That was a time of small things for him. He had spent some years wandering over Europe, picking up a living in various musical occupations, and was glad to settle down at home (though he not infrequently undertook tours abroad during the rest of his life).
4.58 Band Cornet Solo, 'Am Meer' ('By the Sea') Schubert (Soloist, P.C. Cook))
THE Pilgrims' Chant, approaching and withdrawing, the wild Dance of the Nymphs of the Venus Mount, Knight Tannhauser's Love Invocation to Venus, the Pilgrims' Chant once more., these make up the famous and popular Overture to Tannhauser.
Thus is pictured the eternal strife between the carnal and the spiritual, and it will be noted that the spiritual is in the end triumphant.
