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A weekly programme of recent records

and Weather forecast

played by the AMADEUS STRING QUARTET Norbert Brainin (violin) Sieumund Nissel (violin) Peter Schidlof (viola) Martin Lovett (cello)
Quartet in D minor (K.421)
Second in a series of ten weekly programmes
Third broadcast

A request programme of gramophone records

A weekly review edited by Anna Instone and Julian Herbage
Introduced by JULIAN HERBAGE
Clifford Curzon ( born May 18, 1907): an appreciation by DENIS MATTHEWS
Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-1667): by G. B. SHARP
The Symphonies of Henze by ROBERT HENDERSON
' Us poor Hayers all ': by MARY ROWLAND

ⓢ Conducted by LEONARD BERNSTEIN with ZINO FRANCESCATTI (violin) gramophone records

An opera in one act by Holst
Cast in order of appearance: [see below]

(Margaret Neville broadcasts by permission of Sadler's Wells Opera Company)

Imogen Holst writes:
The ballet music from my father's opera The Perfect Fool is often played, but the opera itself has seldom been heard since it was first performed at Covent Garden in May 1923. The members of that first-night audience were bewildered. They were given no programme notes, and I can remember their puzzled expressions as they wondered whether they ought to laugh, or whether they were supposed to recognise some deep, symbolic meaning in the story. My father had no idea that the work would prove so perplexing. To him, it was just a fairy story about a Princess who was wooed by an elderly Wizard and an Italian Troubadour and a Wagnerian Wanderer, but who fell in love with an inarticulate fool who was nearly always asleep.

The libretto is his own. The words are excellent to sing, but there are patches of spoken dialogue which I find embarrassing because they sound like an end-of-term game of charades. Fortunately, a lot of the dialogue has been cut for broadcasting, and the music gains when it is allowed to speak for itself. One can still laugh when the Troubadour's chorus of retainers become 'conventionally agitated,' and when the Wanderer's 'Nay, oh nay! Noisiest negative!' is drowned in a surge of trombones. (Only an ex-addict of Wagner's operas could have written quite such a devastating parody as this.) The orchestration is brilliant throughout, and in this performance Charles Groves manages to convey my father's sense of humour with complete understanding and infectious enjoyment

Piano Sonata in G major (D.894) played by PETER SERKIN
Recording made available by courtesy of Hungarian Radio

Morag Noble (soprano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra Leader, Trevor Williams
Conducted by Gary Bertini
Part 1

ANTONY HOPKINS discusses a work or theme of current interest
Repeated: Tuesday, 4.48 p.m.

Part 2

ⓢ Opera in three acts
Music and words by Wagner sung in German gramophone records (baritone) (bass) (baritone) (soprano) (tenor) (mezzo-soprano)
BOSTON CHORUS PRO MUSICA
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Conducted by ERICH LEINSDORF The action takes place in Antwerp. in the early tenth century. ACT 1
The banks of the river Scheldt. near Antwerp

A series of nine talks in which scientists of various disciplines talk about concepts crucial to their field of study
2: Topology by PROFESSOR E. C ZEEMAN University of Warwick
You cannot comb down the hair on a hairy ball so that it is perfectly smooth: there will always be whorls or tufts. This is one of the theorems of topology, a sort of super-Keumetry. But topology is not all as whimsical as this: it has become one of the most important branches of modern mathematics. And now its very powerful techniques are being applied to the study of the brain, and the processes of biological growth.

ACT 2
Inside the fortress of Antwerp

Aspects of Lord Byron largely drawn from correspondence, journals and memoirs by DENIS GOACHER with GEORGE COULOURIS as narratorDENIS GOACHER as Lord Byron
Others taking part:
Betty Hardy , Gudrun Ure
Douglas Hankin. Denys Hawthorne Harold Kasket , Preston Lockwood and Victor Lucas
Produced by Terence Tiller
Second broadcast

ACT 3
Elsa and Lohengrin's bridal cham. ber, changing to the banks of the river Scheidt

COLIN MASON talks about the Hungarian musical scene and examines the legacy of Bartok and Kodaly
He introduces examples of Szervanszky. Ligeti, and Veress.
Second broadcast followed by an Interlude at 10.55