BBC Archive recordings

[smittims]

It would raise public interest if they made a film about it with Judi Dench and Bill Nighy gathering a bunch of disparate music-lovers together for one last fling: 'my best last exotic big fat record collection.'

[makropulos]

Thanks for these intersting replies. I remember especially a series of plays with famous incidental music, broadcast about 50 years ago: Hassan, the Starlight Express, and The Wasps, the last a full-cast production, much better than the Halle 'one-man show' about twelve years ago. I think they were BBC Wales , produced by Raymond Raikes.

I remember these with great pleasure too. Of the ones done in the 1960s and 70s, I have recordings of the Starlight Express (conducted by Lionel Salter) and the Pilgrim's Progress (Charles Groves, 1977), but would love to hear the Hassan again. The Wasps was done for the VW Centenary, broadcast on 8 October 1972 (conducted by Rae Woodland, as was Hassan) but unfortunately I missed it. It really would be good to hear all of them again.

[french frank]

I remember these with great pleasure too. Of the ones done in the 1960s and 70s, I have recordings of the Starlight Express (conducted by Lionel Salter) and the Pilgrim's Progress (Charles Groves, 1977), but would love to hear the Hassan again. The Wasps was done for the VW Centenary, broadcast on 8 October 1972 (conducted by Rae Woodland, as was Hassan) but unfortunately I missed it. It really would be good to hear all of them again.

I assume this is Hassan by James Elroy Flecker ? I see it was broadcast on Radio 3 in 1975 with the music by Delius (not, as I would have expected, under the controllership of John Drummond but a predecessor, Stephen Hearst, who in some respects was regarded as a 'populariser'). The first BBC productions of the play date back to the 20s, with Henry Ainley as Hassan. I bet those are archives that no longer exist!

[makropulos]

I assume this is Hassan by James Elroy Flecker ? I see it was broadcast on Radio 3 in 1975 with the music by Delius (not, as I would have expected, under the controllership of John Drummond but a predecessor, Stephen Hearst, who in some respects was regarded as a 'populariser'). The first BBC productions of the play date back to the 20s, with Henry Ainley as Hassan. I bet those are archives that no longer exist!

Yes, Flecker's Hassan. As you say, it was a BBC favourite in the 20s and 30s with several broadcasts using Delius's music. Tantalising stuff!

[smittims]

The much missed Vernon'Tod' Handley did a fine LP of the Delius Hassan music , complete I think, and a fine successor to Sir Thomas Beecham's 1955 Philips LP selection (one side of an LP).

[secondfiddle]

Yes, Flecker's Hassan. As you say, it was a BBC favourite in the 20s and 30s with several broadcasts using Delius's music. Tantalising stuff!

The broadcast of James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan in December 1973 (re-broadcast in January 1975) was an excellent production, and a very special one because it included an appendix in which all the extra music that Delius had composed was also played. The cast included Norman Shelley, Robert Hardy, Elizabeth Morgan and Joss Ackland, and Rae Jenkins conducted the BBC Welsh Orchestra. There has since been no broadcast of the play and music which is a great pity because one cannot fully appreciate the beauty of Delius’s music or how it fits into the play until it is heard with Flecker’s verses. In the BBC 1973 broadcast small additions were made in places to the spoken text to explain to the listening audience what would have been happening on stage. Hassan is Delius’s most neglected score. It is a very poetic play, a story of great cruelty. I have a copy of the broadcast that I have often enjoyed rehearing.
There have been other fascinating broadcasts of plays with music that seem rarely to be heard: Folkeraadet, a Norwegian play also with music by Delius broadcast in 1983, and several plays with music by Britten that deserve a rehearing, among them J B Priestley’s Johnson over Jordan (last broadcast 1985), Sackville-West’s The Rescue (last broadcast 1988), and Auden and Isherwood’s The Ascent of F6 (last broadcast 1994). It would be also good to hear the original broadcasts if they exist. Of the plays with music by Britten Louis MacNeice’s The Dark Tower seems to have had the most broadcasts, though it would be interesting to hear the 1950 or 1966 broadcasts when Rawsthorne is credited as conducting Britten’s music.
Norman O’Neill is another composer well-known in his day for the music he wrote for a number of staged plays. J M Barrie’s once popular Mary Rose has not been broadcast with O’Neill’s evocative music since 1950. Perhaps to celebrate the BBC’s centenary there is a case for Radio Three putting on a series of plays with music by significant British composers.

[gradus]

I remember these with great pleasure too. Of the ones done in the 1960s and 70s, I have recordings of the Starlight Express (conducted by Lionel Salter) and the Pilgrim's Progress (Charles Groves, 1977), but would love to hear the Hassan again. The Wasps was done for the VW Centenary, broadcast on 8 October 1972 (conducted by Rae Woodland, as was Hassan) but unfortunately I missed it. It really would be good to hear all of them again.

I had no idea that Rae Woodland conducted. I remember first hearing her at the ROH in Siegfried and my wife knew her later as a teacher in Suffolk.