Edward Johnson writes…
The deaths of two musicians occurred last week, so a couple of brief In memoriam uploads have duly appeared on YouTube.
Carl Davis died aged 86 on August 3 and – to quote Wiki – “he wrote the music for more than 100 TV programmes, created new scores for concert and cinema performances of silent movies and composed many film, ballet and concert scores.” In 1991, he conducted the North German Radio Orchestra in the first performance of David Matthews’s splendid arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s piano cycle The Seasons. Here from that broadcast is ‘August’ …
Bernard Keeffe died aged 98 on August 4 and had an equally distinguished musical career. He was a singer, conductor, broadcaster, presenter and reviewer. He joined the BBC Music Staff in 1955 and from 1960-62 was Controller, Opera at Covent Garden. He conducted many orchestras and in 1974 on Radio 3 he introduced the Incidental Music by Tchaikovsky’ for The Snow Maiden with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Here are two numbers from the score, which contains some delightful music throughout, the ‘Dance of the Clowns’ being the best known …
Bernard Keeffe, https://www.colinscolumn.com/sad-news-bernard-keeffe-conductor-broadcaster-professor-has-died-aged-98/.
Bernard Keefe: another broadcaster of intelligence and approachability has left us (so many these days are approachable, but….). I recall a TV talk (it must have been in the 1970s) in which he talked about Elgar’s orchestration, with illustrations he conducted from the First Symphony. Opened my ears. My life as an Elgarian began…