THE WEEK’S RADIO Music For Handel Bicentenary

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28869, 14 April 1959, Page 21

THE WEEK’S RADIO Music For Handel Bicentenary

rr the 200th anniversary of Handels death on Apnl 14, 1759, 3YC is devoting a major part of its evening programme to his music. The programme begins at 7 o’clock with a performance of the original version of the Music for the Orchestra 6 " ° r^S le Berlin Philharmonic

This will be followed by an aria from “Jeptha.” Handel's own favourite among his 32 oratorios. After a performance by the pianist. Wilhelm Kempff, of the air and variations known as the "Harmonious Blacksmith,” there will be three arias from Handel’s operas: “Like as the love-lorn turtle” from “Atlanta,” “How changed the vision” from "Admeto” and “Piangero.” from “Giulio Cesare." After these will be heard Concerto No. 3 for Oboe and Strings, Violin and Harpsichord Sonata No. 3 and the “Te Deum for the Peace of Utrecht.” Tomorrow morning, in 3YA’s morning concert at 11.30 a.m. Kirsten Flagstad may be heard singing two more of Handel’s operatic arias—“ Gods all-power-ful” from “Radamisto” and ‘‘O sleep why dost thou leave me”’ from “Semele.”

When George Frederick Handel died 200 years ago on April 14. 1759, at the age of 74, he was beloved and respected by the English nation with no rival to approach him as a composer. He was born in Halle, Germany, on February 26, 1685, where his father was a surgeon-barber. His father was opposed to young Handel’s musical studies and had him trained as a lawyer, but his son s talents were so outstanding that he allowed him to be taught by the best music master in the city. With his father’s death Handel abandoned his law studies and took up music as a profession, at Hamburg.

At Hamburg he made a brilliant debut as a composer with the opera, “Almira." He composed a St. John Passion and two more operas before he left Hamburg for Italy in 1706. The three years he spent In Italy were most important to his artistic growth There he came into close personal touch with the leading Italian masters, Corelli, Alesandro and Domenico Scarletti and others. He also acquired a mastery of the Italian styles and technique which enabled him to rival successfully the greatest Italian masters. In 1710 he was appointed court conductor at Hanover. But a little later he was invited to produce a new opera in London. The opera, “Rinaldo,” was so successful that Handel resolved to settle in London, although he returned to Hanover for a short time. There followed a series of operatic triumphs. although Handel was in a rather awkward position when his former sovereign at Hanover became King George lof England. Until 1728 Handel’s success as a composer of Italian opera continued, but then the public began to desert Italian opera for “The Beggar’s Opera," and Handel had to close his

theatre. However, he soon engaged a new company of great Italian singers and reopened the theatre. For a few years he was fairly successful, but competition from “The Beggars Opera” and a rival Italian company forced him to close again. In 1734, he opened again in the new Covent Garden Theatre, but by this time he had begun to turn towards oratorio. In 1937 Handel’s rival secured the services of the great male soprano, Farinelli, and each house strove to outdo the other. By the end of the year both had collapsed and Handel had suffered a stroke. In the next year the ruins of the two opera companies were combined and Handel contributed several new scores but he came out of the venture bankrupt.

From then on he concentrated on oratorio and in the next 20 years he wrote almost as many oratorios. While working at “Jeptha” in 1751, he gradually lost his sight and he was blind for the last seven years of his life. Bloomsbury Group Bloomsbury evokes for some persons visions of a famous group decidated to “art for art’s sake” and led by Lytton Strachey, the biographer; Maynard Keynes, the economist; Roger Fry. the art critic: and Virgipia Wolf, the novelist. But for those inside it, the Bloomsbury Group was, as Clive Bell recently insisted, merely a circle of friends with similar tastes and interests, who happened to live near each other. In the 8.8. C. programme on the Bloomsbury Group from 3YC at 9.30 tonight the recorded voices of some of its most famous members will be heard. They are Virginia Wolf, Lord Keynes and Sir Desmond McCarthy, secretary of the post-impressionist exhibition the group sponsored in 1910, who describes the behaviour of the British public on being confronted for the first time by the paintings of Van Gogh and Cezanne. Others who will be heard were friends or acquaintances of the group, including Lord Russell, E. M. Forster, John Lehmann, Kingsley Amis and Duncan Grant, the painter. Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, the former Conservative Prime Minister of Britain, who died in 1947 at the age of 80, held office three times between 1923 and 1937—years which saw the General Strike of 1926, the conferences on the British position in India, the abdication of Edward VIII and Hitler’s rise to power. In the 8.8.C.’s “Portrait of Stanley Baldwin” (YA’s, 9.30 a.m. Sunday) his handling of affairs at home and abroad is vigorously challenged and defended by a series of speakers. Among them are Lord Davidson, who was his close friend; Lord Templewood, his Foreign Secretary; Lord Attlee, the former Labour Prime Minister, and Dr. Hugh Dalton, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer. The voice of Baldwin himself, recorded in 1933 and 1935, is also heard. N.Z. Quartet On Wednesday, from 2YC, at 9p.m. there will be a broadcast of particular interest to chamber music devotees. It will be the first performance by the newlyformed Aspey String Quartet, playing Quartet No. 57 in G minor Op. 54 No. 1 by Haydn. Although he has always been an ardent lover of chamber music, Mr Vincent Aspey the leader of the new quartet, has been kept fully occupied in recent years by his duties as leader of the National Orchestra and with his various solo engagements, but many will remember his fine work as principal of the N.B.S. String Quartet in the years before the formation of the Orchestra. The members of the Aspey Quartet are all leading players in the National Orchestra. Eric Lawson is second violin, Glynne Adams viola, and Farquhar Wilkinson ’cello. Messrs Adams and Wilkinson were both members of the Malcolm Latchem Quartet, the winner of last year’s Judith Bagnall String Quartet contest, but this quartet was forced to disband when Malcolm Latchem returned to England recently. The Aspey Quartet hopes to broadcast as regularly as time permits and performances of quartets by Mozart and Schubert will follow.