NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

She danced a full programme of well-known short ballet extracts. Adelina Patti,
who had appeared a number of times in the town made her last appearance in
the Town Hall on 18 th October 1907, where she appeared with the baritone,
Robert Radford. Possibly inspired by all this musical activity Newcastle decided
to make one last effort to emulate the Three Choirs Festivals that were still taking
place regularly in Leeds, Worcester and Birmingham and mount a three day
festival of their own, inviting, as was customary at theses showcase events,
musical forces from outside town. The festival took place on the 20 th – 22 nd
October 1909 and seems to have been a success. The organisers dispensed
with the old Grand Festival formula, ditching Handel and his oratorios to make
room for the big Romantic works of Brahms, Liszt, Strauss, Busoni and
Tchaikovsky. Another innovation was the inclusion of a number of British works
conducted by their composers and these included two first public performances
by composers active in Newcastle.
The newly formed London Symphony Orchestra was hired together with the
famous Russian conductor, Wassili Safanoff, renowned for his Tchaikovsky
performances and also for conducting without a baton (a struggling young wouldbe
conductor from London was later to adopt Safanoff’s batonless style and turn
it into an art – his name was Leopold Stokowski) Edward Elgar, Granville
Bantock, and Rutland Boughton conducted their own works and the titanic
pianist, composer, conductor, teacher, writer and first rate musical thinker,
Ferruccio Dante Michaelangiolo Benvenuto Busoni (1866-1924) played his own
five movement piano concerto. Following its premier, Professor Dent, respected
writer and critic, said that it provoked extremes of reaction; rapture and outrage
and between these two the silent majority simply shook their heads in
stupefaction. It was noise, more noise, then eccentricity and licentiousness
provoked yet more noise. The five movements were submerged in a flood of
cacophony painting the joys of lusting barbarians, the orgies of absinthe drinkers
and common prostitutes. One of the more interesting aspects of the festival was
surely the two first public performances of works written by composers who were
closely associated with the town, itself. The first of these was Edgar L. Bainton, a
London born musician (1880), whose orchestral work ‘Promethius’ was given its
first performance. Bainton was at this time teacher of piano and composition at
the Newcastle Conservatoire. We shall leave him for the moment and take a
closer look at his interesting and unusual career in a later chapter. The other
composer was Adam von Ahn Carse, born in Newcastle on 19 th May 1878. It
would seem that he changed his name for professional reasons. At age fourteen
he was being educated in Hanover in Germany but later attended the Royal
Academy of Music and appears to have spent most of his active life teaching
music at Winchester and the RAM. His Symphony in G minor was given its first
public performance at the festival and as with Bainton above he conducted his
own work. As well as his own compositions he edited many classical symphonies
by Abel, Arne, J.C.Bach, Dittersdorf, Fils, Gossec, Stamnitz among others and
wrote extensively on music including a book on The Life of Julien, whom he
refers to as the ‘Establisher of the Promenade Concerts in England.
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