by Morgan Nicholas
Leader, Philip Whiteway
Conductor, B. Walton O'Donnell
Gethyn Wykeham-George
(violoncello)
Norman Allin (bass): Simon the Cellarer (Hatton). The Diver (Loder). The Bandolero (Leslie Stuart )
at the BBC Theatre Organ
Leader, Leonard Hirsch
Conductor, Eric Fogg
William Parsons (bass)
British Composers
After service in the War, which included two years as prisoner of war in Germany, Gordon Jacob entered the Royal College of Music to study composition under the late Sir Charles Stanford, and conducting under Sir Adrian Boult. He is now on the teaching staff there. His principal works include a ballet, The Jew in the Bush, a concerto for viola and orchestra, a concerto for piano and strings, a string quartet, an overture ' Clogher Head ', and the Variations on an Original Theme.
Directed by Rene Tapponnier from the Carlton Hotel
Ann Fremantle
Russian Programme
The BBC
Midland Orchestra
Leader, Alfred Cave
Conducted by Leslie Heward Gogol's collection of short stories,
' Evenings on a farm near Dikanka ', has been a fruitful source of inspiration to Russian opera composers. Mussorgsky's Fair at Sorochintsy, Tchaikovsky's Vakula the Smith, Rimsky-Korsakov’s A May Night and Christmas Eve-all these works are based on Gogol's delightful, humorous-fantastic tales of village life in the Ukraine.
' A May Night' had been a favourite tale of Rimsky-Korsakov's from childhood ; he read it with his lady-love on the day he proposed to her ; and it was his wife who finally persuaded him to make an opera of it. The opera (written in 1878) was Korsakov's second, and, as listeners will gather from the overture, is one of his most tuneful and lyrical co.n-positions, by no means depending on orchestral colour for its effect.
Much less often played than the popular Second Symphony in B minor, Borodin's First Symphony is in some respects an even finer work. Its first movement is one of the most remarkable in the whole history of the post - Beethovenian symphony, practically the whole of the thematic material being stated in the first few bars of the slow introduction. The other three movements-the Berliozian scherzo with its folk-songish trio, the oriental slow movement, the breezy, though rather Schumannesque, finale-if by no means as original, are equally delightful.
It is almost incredible that this
Symphony was the work of a self-taught amateur. Though, it is true, Balakirev claimed that ' every bar of it was criticised and overhauled by me '. It was begun in 1862, but not completed till 1867.
4.33 Suite, Nutcracker... Tchaikovsky
Joseph Szigeti (violin): Sonata in D (Handel)-1Andante ; 2 Allegro ; 3 Longhetto ; 4 Allegro. Minuet (Debussy)
