Programme from Edinburgh

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 537, 7 October 1949, Page 16

Programme from Edinburgh

LTHOUGH the Edinburgh Festival has lost the full-time services of its director, Rudolf ~Bing, to the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York, it is reported that he will be retained in an advisory capacity to guide the presentation on future occasions. However, with its"third season just concluded, the Festival has already established itself as one of the most stimulating musical and dramatic events of the year in Britain and on the Continent, and should be able to bear with less concern the loss of the man from whom the original idea of holding the Festival came. To give overseas listeners some idea of the works performed at last year’s production the BBC Transcription Service has issued a 60-minute composite feature called An Impression of the Edinburgh Festival, written by John Keir Cross and based on recordings made during the Festival. A second pregramme, made up of music recorded

at the Usher Hall, featured Yehudi Menuhin with the BBC Scottish Orchestra under Ian White, playing. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. An Impression of the Edinburgh Festival, which’ will be broadcast from 4YA at 3.30 p.m. on Sunday, October 16, includes excerpts from concerts by the Augusteo Orchestra; the BBC Scottish Orchestra, and the Glasgow Orpheus Choir; instrumental recitals by Alfred Cortot, Andrés Segovia (the Spanish guitarist), Louis Kentner and Yehudi Menuhin; and song recitals by Kathleen Ferrier and Roy Henderson. Extracts from plays include Jean-Louis Barrault as Hamlet with the Company from the Théatre Marigny, Paris, Androcles and the Lion by the Company of the Glyndebourne Children’s Theatre, and Robert Kemp’s adaptation of Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites, a morality play by the’ Scottish poet Sir David Lyndsay, which was first produced in 1540.