Youtor
Sidonie Goossens harp Londonderry Air amp Whirlwind
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=JQ7TN4XcMDg
1. Londonderry Air (arr Cyril Scott.) • 3:20 2 Carlos Salzedo: Whirlwind • • Thanks to Rolf for allowing me to use his excellent transfers. You can find this and many other wonderful selections and information at his website: http://satyr78kl.blogspot.nl/ • John Marson • The Guardian, Wednesday 15 December 2004 • The harp is a magnificent sight in an orchestra, and its solo music is often similarly splendid, if rather conservative in idiom. Thus Sidonie Goossens, who has died aged 105, was a paradox among great harpists: as the principal harp of a radio orchestra, she was unseen by most of her audience, and since that orchestra was the BBC Symphony, she had every opportunity to revel in performing the modern works central to its repertory. • Sidonie started broadcasting in 1924, from the earliest 2LO calling days of the BBC, in regular programmes from its Savoy Hill studio with the Wireless Quartet, and was a member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from its foundation in 1930 until 1980. In retirement, she continued to play with the orchestra from time to time, as at a Prom concert in 1988 for Vaughan Williams's Serenade To Music, whose premiere she had participated in 50 years before. Her last appearance as a performer was as soloist at the Last Night of the Proms in 1991, shortly before her 92nd birthday, when she accompanied Dame Gwyneth Jones in Sidonie's own arrangement of The Last Rose Of Summer. Following a stroke, she was unable to play in later years, though she continued to teach and coach a few pupils. • She received an honour probably unequalled in orchestral history when, in 1999, she occupied the Royal Box in the Royal Festival Hall at a concert dedicated to her by her former orchestra. The programme of works by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern was ideally chosen to mark her long and enthusiastic involvement with the new music of the 20th century. • Born in Liscard, on Merseyside, and brought up there and in Liverpool, she was saved from drowning by her elder sister Marie while on holiday in Southport. Theirs was a musical and theatrical family - their father and grandfather came from Belgium, and both conducted the Carl Rosa Opera Company - so it was inevitable that Sidonie, like her three brothers and sister, should learn an instrument. After demonstrating a distaste for the violin, she was taught the harp, eventually studying at the Royal College of Music with Miriam Timothy, founder harpist of the London Symphony Orchestra. • Early engagements included the revival of Chu Chin Chow at His Majesty's Theatre. There the Shah of Persia was so taken by what he saw that he asked if he could buy both Sidonie and her harp. But she was not for sale: further theatre work included No, No Nanette and the original production of Flecker's Hassan, with music by Delius. • Sidonie appeared with the Goossens Orchestra, formed by her conductor brother Eugene, and the adventurous programming of the BBC ensured that she worked under the batons of Beecham, Wood, Boult, Sargent, Furtwängler, Toscanini, Richard Strauss and Bruno Walter. Many composers wrote for her, including William Alwyn, Arnold Bax, Lord Berners, Bernard van Dieren, Cyril Scott and her brother Eugene. • Sidonie was heard as soloist at the Proms more often than any other harpist. She played concertos by Alwyn, Paul Creston, Debussy, Dittersdorf, Hans Henkemans, Bernard Rands and Germaine Tailleferre. In Eugene Goossens's Concert Piece, written for the Goossens family, Sidonie and Marie played harps and Leon the oboe and cor anglais, while the composer conducted. Their horn-playing brother Adolphe had died in the first world war. • For the rest: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/...
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