ORGAN RECITAL

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 267, 31 July 1918, Page 6

ORGAN RECITAL

About one hundred people attended tli9 organ recital by the city organist (Mr. Isernard F. Page) in the Town Hall last night. Tlio programme included two "request" items—Mendelssohn's overture to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the third movement from "Scheherazade (Rimsky-KorsakotT). Mendelssohn wroto the overture (o the Shakespearean play when ho was but. eighteen years old, an. age at which the average boy can sear:o be induced to works of the greatest of all bards." This overture, showing |;he most complete conception of tlio spirit of tlio play, affords evidence of the early manifestation of 'genius m tho composer. The other item is a selected ono of four movements in a symphonic suite for orchestra, written to a "pr<v gramme" based on the "Arabian Nights. The music tries to tell how the clever Scheherazade contrived to defer her own execution by interesting the gujtan Schaiiriar in her stories. The Sultan had known a faithless wife, wherefore he vowed to have every one of his succeeding wives executed on the njoiiung after the nuptials. Scheherazade told him "to be continued' stones in_ the grey of ono thousand ajid mornings, and sho was not slain. It is a somewhat complex theme for a musical composition, but the music is as good as the story. For the rest, Mr. Page had to offer selections from the music of Saint Saens, Wagner, Glazounov, Coupe' rin, and Martini.