Margaret is sitting alone on a large settee in the small Napoleon Room in the Palais du Petit Luxembourg. It is eleven o'clock on the morning of an International Conference. On the floor at her feet is a solid block of documents about half as high as a man. Margaret is reading a document with a wry face. Percy suddenly appears - as though looking for something.

Contributors

Writer:: John Palmer

Source: Radio Times

19:45

A Popular Concert

5WA Cardiff

Sat 21^st Dec 1929, 19:45 on 5WA Cardiff

View in Radio Times

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

A good deal of Coleridge-Taylor's music was written originally for the stage, and he provided incidental music for more than one of Sir Herbert Tree's productions. In 1910 Sir Herbert proposed to produce a fairy play by Alfred Noyes, and commissioned Coleridge-Taylor to compose the music. The production did not take place, and Coleridge-Taylor used the music independently; this was the Overture. The 'Three Dream Dances' and the 'Scenes from an Imaginary Ballet' were also part of the same music.

This fairy tale Opera, by Humperdinck, to a story written by his sister, was produced in the first instance without any thought of public performance, intended only for the amusement of young people in the Humperdinck's circle of acquaintance. But the world at large was not to be denied such attractive music, and the Opera has long since won a world-wide popularity. It makes use in the most skilful and fascinating way of actual German folk-tunes, and its melodies throughout are of the simplest and most immediately pleasing order. The Overture begins with the Evening Prayer which the children sing before lying down to sleep in the woods, the prayer in which they, ask for fourteen angels to watch over them till morning:-
'Two at my head to guard my thoughts,
Two at my feet to guide my steps,
Two on my left to watch my heart,' and so on. Then there breaks in the stirring music of the witch and her gingerbread house; the merrymaking of the children is heard, too, and the song of thanksgiving at their deliverance from the witch's spell; but the music of the Prayer dominates most of the Overture, and it is welded with the other tunes in the most cunning way.