Relayed from The Patti Pavilion, Swansea
National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)
(Leader, Louis Levitus)
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite

The words of this air begin 'Credo in un Dio crudel che m'ha creato' (I believe in a cruel God, who has created me in His image). It is sung in the second act of the opera by Iago, the adjutant of Othello, who, as those who are familiar with their Shakespeare will remember, hates his chief, and plots to do him bitter wrong.
This air is not the counterpart of anything in the Shakespeare play, but was an original interpolation by Verdi's librettist, the composer Boito. It has long been popular as a powerful baritone solo, and the orchestral accompaniment, with its vivid trumpet part, is not the least attractive feature of it.

Brahms kept the world of music waiting for a long time for his first symphony. We know from his letters that it was finished by 1862, but it was not played until fourteen years later, at Karlsruhe with Otto Dessoff conducting. Brahms himself elected to hear his work 'for the first time in the little town that holds a good friend, a good conductor, and a good orchestra.' Brahms conducted it soon afterwards in many of the German centres, and it was first played in this country by the Cambridge University Music Society, to whom Brahms sent the score and parts still in manuscript. The first performance in the United States offers a good instance of the way in which they regard music there. There were two rival organizations in New York, one conducted by Theodore Thomas and one by Dr. Damrosch. Each was keen to be the first to introduce the new work, and Mr. Thomas hoped to score off his rival by inducing all the local dealers to provide him only with the score and parts and to deny them to Dr. Damrosch. The work had just been published, and Damrosch arranged for an unknown friend to buy a copy of the score. It was torn into pieces and handed out to four speedy copyists, who worked so strenuously that Damrosch after all succeeded in playing the symphony a whole week earlier than his rival.
Dignified, noble, music, it is the great Brahma at his very best, rather stern and austere at times, but full of that great breadth and sanity of outlook which we look for from him.