Thank
you Mr. Autoharp; I am inexpressibly happy about the two Medtner sonatas the Szymanowski and the van Dieren! And
Aniara comes as a most interesting and welcome surprise.
I have checked my catalogue but haven't got any of the three works mentioned by member Smittims. I remember hearing the
Wasps but unfortunately did not record it.
The subject to-day is the première of Donald Banks's
Divisions for orchestra, completed in 1965. Banks was a colonial of course, but after arriving in London he became the friend and secretary of the head of music at the B.B.C., Mr. Edward Clark, a move which did his career no harm at all. He also studied composition under both Seiber and Dallapiccola, and began to write music for the Hammer horror films such as
The Mummy's Shroud and
Frankenstein.
Divisions (I do not at present know the entire significance of this name) is/are very much in the style of Schönberg's
Variations.
Banks made a bad move when he returned to the colonies in 1972 - at much the same time as both Tristram Cary and Roger Smalley emigrated there - little was heard of any of them thereafter!