Wireless Concerts lose Edward Clarke (1936)

Abstract News comes that Edward Clarke [sic] has left the B.B.C.1 The bold scope and high standard of the Contemporary Concerts have been largely due to his perseverance. Both listeners and the B.B.C. music department will regret his going. The most important music broadcasts announced for May are Alban Berg’s violin concerto, completed shortly before his death last year, and Vladimir Vogel’s i¾lgadu, a work for chorus and small orchestra. The Berg is scheduled for May 1st, and the Vogel for May 16th. The month’s music will also include relays from Covent Garden opera house. The season opens on April 27th with Die Meistersinger. This will be broadcast in its entirety, a procedure almost unprecedented for the B.B.C. The Berg concerto will be played by Krasner2 and conducted by Anton von Webern, himself a composer and close friend of Berg during his lifetime.3 Von Webern’s series of Workers’ Concerts in Vienna drew crowded houses, and won him wide fame as a conductor. Vladimir Vogel, Russian composer living in Switzerland, is best known for his fine Storm March for brass, and for two rhythmic studies for orchestra. The choral writing of Wagadu is said to be difficult to a degree of virtuosity. It is a pity that no room has been found for novelties in this season’s opera. Practical difficulties may bar the production of Berg’s i-¼zzeck, but means surely exist for the staging of Shostakovitch’s Lady Macbeth. The broadcast of this work in March stirred up interest and discussion in many musical quarters. Why should Weinberger’s delightful Schwanda be dropped when, with a little nursing, it might deservedly become a popular favourite?