BBC; childhood memories-and gratitude

[Guest]

I was enjoying a recording of Grieg's Symphonic Dances yesterday evening when I recalled that the charming folk-tunes in the 2nd and 3rd movements were used as opening and closing music for a BBC production of The Railway Children in the early 50s. I must have been about eight. Even today, the music evokes memories of a happy childhood.

It set me thinking about other music introduced to me by BBC serials.
First of all, a production of David Copperfield in the 50s which used the Scherzo of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony. More imaginatively perhaps, a later Great Expectations employed Honegger's Symphonie Liturgique effectively. This was a fine production using the original ending of the book in which Pip and Estella part. It was what Dickens preferred. And rightly so.....Pip was unable to make satisfactory relationships with any of the women in his life.

Also in the 50s, I remember the second subject of the first movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony (we called it number 5 in those days) being used in a serial about settlers in Red Indian territory ( this term dates it!), The Cabin in the Clearing. A creaky production which compared unfavourably to US westerns...except for the music.
An adult serial on Saturday evenings,Quatermass 2, terrified the life out of me the moment Mars from Holst's Planet Suite started. I recall trying to hammer out the the theme on the piano. In 4/4 I'm afraid.

Today, the BBC, quite properly, encourages young composers to write theme music for its shows. However, maybe I'm not alone in feeling gratitude for some of the music which I heard for the first time on television and has stayed with me for the whole of my life. I suspect that today's young viewers may not be so fortunate.

[Nick Armstrong]

Agreed Oliver, though there were good 'specifically composed' themes back then too.

But among fondly-remembered 'classics', perhaps above all for me is Sullivan's "Irish" Symphony (third movement) in this:

[Nick Armstrong]

And of course Hamish MacCunn's 'The Land of the Mountain and the Flood' in this:

[Richard Tarleton]

My introduction to the Symphonie Fantastique - March to the Scaffold - and a couple of years later, Le Corsaire.....The Three Musketeers used I think the third appearance of the big tune where it becomes quite climactic, the Tenant of WH used the second part of the overture.

Sutherland's Law - that was one of the many occasions I wrote to the BBC to ask what that music was (which is how I discovered what the above two were).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And the connection between Cali's two choices? The late, great Iain Cuthbertson, who played headmaster Arnold in TB'sSs and the eponymous hero of S'sLaw.

[Nick Armstrong]

And the connection between Cali's two choices? The late, great Iain Cuthbertson, who played headmaster Arnold in TB'sSs and the eponymous hero of S'sLaw.

Well spotted, Wilson. I wondered which of you would be first to notice that!

[LeMartinPecheur]

I recall in my teens c1970 being hooked by the title-music to a serialised R4 thriller, name long forgotten, on after the 6PM news IIRC (though that might be too much of a squeeze to get it in before The Archers).

Was highly chuffed when I found via R3 concerts that it was a chunk out of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra - one of my first LP purchases therefore (LSO/ Solti still on my shelves).

[Serial_Apologist]

That movement from Faure's Dolly Suite as the closing theme for Listen with Mother

[agingjb]

Does anyone remember what, if any, program used the second movement of Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No 2?

BTW, some of my earliest contact with music was in schools broadcasts. Middlesex County Council, as it was then, installed radios in our primary school, around 1948, the sound was dire, but I can recall Till Eulenspiegel and, perhaps, Erlkonig.