National Orchestra of Wales
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite
'From the earliest days of my youth,' Sir Frederic Cowen has said, 'I was intended for music. Even if I rack my memory I cannot discover that I ever had the opportunity of thinking of or choosing anything else.' Even so, not many musical youngsters achieve an Operetta at eight - Sir Frederic's feat. It was written to a libretto by a girl cousin, and its title was Garibaldi. 'It had a run of two consecutive nights in the Royal Opera House back parlour,' we hear-doubtless to enormous applause from the entire family.
Sir Frederic, who came to England from Jamaica four years before the important event described above, has been composing and conducting ever since.
This Overture, suggested by the old nursery rhyme of The Butterflies' Ball and the Grasshoppers' Feast, is delicately and daintily orchestrated, with many trills and flutterings on Flutes, light converse of the Woodwind and Strings, and so forth. There are suggestions, too, of the delicious languor of a summer's afternoon.
Delius has an exquisite touch in suggesting in music the beauties of nature.
This impression of Spring-time joy is scored for Strings, Woodwind, and Horns, the Strings being divided into nine or ten parts. A rich and velvety texture results.
After a mere three bars of Introduction, the first tune (quite short) begins; it has a rocking motion, perhaps suggested by the rhythm of a cuckoo's cry, and is given to Strings, with, in one place, little wisps of melody in Clarinet and Oboe woven in. A little later the second tune starts. It is a Norwegian folk-song, In Ola Valley. It runs on continuously from the previous tune, and begins very much as that did, but its opening can quite easily be noticed from the fact that the Flute enters here (for the first time in the piece), doubling the first phrase of the tune an octave higher. (The entry of the Oboe, a moment later, with the same phrase, cannot be missed.)
There are several vague suggestions of cuckoo-calls, as for instance by the two Clarinets, a little after the point just described. Soon, however, there comes an actual imitation of the bird's cry (marked 'Cuckoo' in the score); it is allotted to the First Clarinet.
This continues for some time, and then the piece ends with a repetition of the first tune. very softly played, and at last fading into the distance.
