' Why Not Keep a Diary ? ' May Martin (Contralto)

The Birmingham Station Orchestra, conducted by Joseph Lewis

Cherubini was a voluminous composer. He lived eighty-two years, and was composing for nearly, seventy of them. He remarked in the preface to a catalogue of his works that he began to learn music at six, and composition at nine.

Though the Opera, Ali Baba, dates from 1833, it was largely made out of a work written forty years earlier. As one might expert, its Overture has plenty of showy effects, Drums, Cymbals, and Triangle joining in to conjure up the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights tale of the Forty Thieves.