Relayed from the National Museum of Wales

National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)

(to 12.45)

by The Coney Beach Five
Relayed from The Dansant Hotel, Metropole, Swansea

(At the Piano, Ralph Johnson)

Relayed from The Assembly Room, City Hall, Cardiff
National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)
(Leader, Louis Levitus)
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite

Born in 1892, in Gloucestershire, Mr. Herbert Howells had his first instruction at the hands of Dr. Herbert Brewer, of Gloucester Cathedral. He was himself an articled pupil there for a time, coming in 1912 to the Royal College of Music in London with an open scholarship. After a brilliant career as a student, he joined the staff of the College, and has since earned a distinguished position for himself among the younger native composers. He is at home in every form of music, except opera, which he has not yet explored, and in all of them displays a sure hand and a real facility of invention. It may be that his happiest successes have been won in music of the more intimate order, and the little Minuet to be played this evening is a particularly happy example of the effective way in which he uses the slighter tones of the orchestra.

The unhappy hero of Puccini's Tosca is the painter, Cavaradossi, who is first tortured and then done to death by his jealous rival Scarpia, Chief of Police. In the third Act he is in prison and knows that he is to die, and in this song compares his unhappy fate with the blissful moment when first he met Tosca-a starlit night. In the operatic version the melody is played first by clarinet, and at the end where the singer rises to a climax of passionate grief, the strings of the orchestra combine with the voice to express the tragedy of the words.

(to 0.00)