NET Symphony; 6; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Part 1

NET National Educational Television takes pride in presenting the first nationwide telecast by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London in its only United States television appearance during its 1963 American tour. This concert is being presented in Symphony Hall, Boston. The orchestra founded in 1946 by Sir Thomas Beechum will be directed by one of England's greatest conductors, Sir Malcolm Sargent. Patron for the concert and the United States tour is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has already made one highly successful tour of the United States in the spring of 1950 under its founder Sir Thomas Beechum. The orchestra is now reorganized and managed by its member musicians under the title of Reform Limited. The Royal Philharmonic performs regularly at both the Royal Festival Hall and the Royal Albert Hall in London and in radio and television broadcasts

over the BBC. During the summer it takes part in the famed Blind Gorn Festival and it also makes frequent tours abroad, most recently under Sir Malcolm Sargent, tour of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Soviet Union. Sir Malcolm Sargent will open the concert with the cocaine overture by Sir Edward Elgar. Elgar is best known today for his pomp and circumstance marches and such orchestral works as the Enigma Variations. He is perhaps the greatest British composer to emerge in the 200 years which followed the death of Henry Persel in 1696. Born in 1857 and trained at first for a law career, Elgar did not begin to devote himself to musical composition on a full-time basis until he was 34, the year in which he composed the Enigma Variations. Two years later he wrote the cocaine overture. Edward Elgar hoped to bring greatness back into English music, a stature it had not enjoyed

since the time of Persel and Handel. Writing over 60 years ago to the great German conductor Hans Richter to thank him for his especially masterful performance of the cocaine overture in Liverpool, Elgar added, I hope the symphony I'm trying to write will answer to these higher ideals and if I am more satisfied with it than with my present compositions, I shall hope to be allowed to dedicate it to my honored friend Hans Richter. Some of Elgar's critics found traces of Wagner's overture to the master singer in this work, but Elgar denied this. To a close musical friend he admitted that the cocaine overture had been inspired by passages from Leo de Lee Ballet Sylvia, where many have seen in Elgar the influence of Brahms, Wagner and Ricard Strauss, the composer himself preferred to think of himself as a musician in the line of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Gunau. Now here is her Malcolm Sargent to open a concert with the National Anthem of the United

States and Great Britain. So Malcolm Sargent has played a significant role in England's musical life for over 45

years. He's conducted every major symphony orchestra and choral group in Britain and is toured extensively with the London Philharmonic, Halle Orchestra and Liverpool Philharmonic as well as the Royal Philharmonic. From 1950 to 1957 he was conductor in chief of the BBC Orchestra with which he still associated in its celebrated annual Prominent Concerts. At the invitation of Achilles Toscanini, so Malcolm made his American debut in 1945 conducting the NBC symphony. He returned to this country 10 years later to lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in a concert in its home city in New York, and now Elgar's Cocaine Overture.

So Malcolm Sargent has conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra into Elgar's Cocaine

Overture. Next, Sir Malcolm has chosen to bring us Ralph Von Williams' work for double string orchestra fantasy on a theme by Thomas Talis. Von Williams was born in 1872, 15 years after Elgar. He studied in Germany with Max Brough, a path followed by many young composers at the end

of the 19th century. But by 1908 Von Williams was dissatisfied with his own work and decided on further study. He went to Paris in 1909 to work with Maurice Carvel, actually two and a half years his junior. Almost immediately upon returning to England in 1910, Von Williams composed the fantasy on a theme by Thomas Talis. Despite his work with Ravel, this lyrical work owes far more to the composer's high regard for Britain's Elizabethan composers, Thomas Talis, William Bird, and Orlando Gibbons. Ralph Von Williams belongs to a special group of symphonic composers working at the turn of the 20th century, Sibelius and Finland, Rachmaninoff in Russia, and Marla in Austria. His work has an epic quality yet without losing its roots in English folk music. In his London Symphony written in 1914, he makes use of the sounds of the Westminster Chimes, St. Vendors' cries and bank holiday tunes. Von Williams expressed particular admiration for two composers of this century, Sibelius and Stravinsky.

Now here is the Malcolm for Ralph Von Williams fantasy on a theme by Thomas Talis. . . .

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