H.C. Burgess and Orchestra, relayed from the Madeira Cove, Weston-super-Mare
Referring to the Marche Heroique by Saint-Saens, this March is the composer's tribute to a friend, the painter Henri Regnault, who was killed in the Siege of Paris in 1871. It is less a funeral march than a piece suggestive of the indomitable spirit and energy of brave men who, though defeated, are not utterly vanquished; whose pride yet burns within them, and whose heads are held high.
The composer of the overture to The Bartered Bride (Smetana) was the first man who caused the outside world to take notice of the music of Bohemia (or Czecho-Slovakia, as we now call that country).
Two years ago his countrymen celebrated the centenary of his birth by holding a great Smetana Festival at Prague.
His Bartered Bride Overture, one of the most exhilarating ever written, gives us the spirit of open-air merrymaking, and adds a few touches of tenderness as relief.
(to 13.00)
