Leader, Philip Whiteway
Conductor, E. Godfrey Brown

Overture, La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder)...Rossini
Siegfried Idyll...Wagner
Ballet Music, Carmen...Bizet
Overture, Tannhauser...Wagner

Rossini's one-act farce La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder) was written at Venice in the spring of 1812. It was produced at the San Mosè Theatre in May, but it was not a success. Both the music and the libretto were attacked. Nevertheless, as Francis Toye points out, 'the overture, at any rate, with its piquant colouring and very individual freshness, is an entirely charming composition, one of the best of Rossini's early essays in the form, particularly interesting, moreover, as showing the genesis of the crescendo idea which, a few months later, he was accused of stealing from another composer'.

The 'Siegfried Idyll', Wagner's first purely instrumental work and perhaps the loveliest thing he ever wrote, was not originally intended for the world in general. It was Wagner's personal gift to his second wife, and it was only later that he decided to publish it and permit its public performance. For several years Wagner had been living in retirement at Tribschen with Cosima, the divorced wife of von Bulow, and in 1869 she bore him a son whom they named Siegfried. Next year he married her and on her birthday (Christmas Day) gave her this delightful surprise - the 'Siegfried Idyll', played by a little band placed on the stairs outside her bedroom door.