Eric Coates' Music from 1ZB

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 11

Eric Coates' Music from 1ZB

F it is a pleasure for many listeners "+ to hear the works of Eric Coates, it is just as much a pleasure for menybers of an orchestra, to play them; for Coates believes that every player should have something to do. From his own ‘xperience he knows the boredom some players have to face, waiting to add their few bars of music. And®so Coates’ policy in orchestrating his compositions is that every instrument, from the first violin to the triangle, should have something to say. Next month Eric Coates will be 61 years old. He was born in Nottinghamshire, England, and educated at the »\ Royal Academy of Music, London. After playing in the Queen’s Hall under Sir Henry Wood, he started composing and conducting. At the promenade concerts of 1911, Sir Henry Wood introduced the Miniature Suite, composed by Coates when he was 25. Other suites followed and later, at the request of his small son, Coates started writing fairy stories in music. The first was The Three Bears Suite.

Coates is still composing, and his most notable work in recent years has been his Three Elizabeths Suite, written in 1944. A special programme of his music will be broadcast by 1ZB at 10.0 p.m. this Sunday, July 27. It will include The Three Bears, part of The Four. Ways, Saxo-Rhapsody, Sleepy Lagoon, "Valsette" from Wood Nymphs and the Three Elizabeths.