Excellent, thank you. Not only is he unctuous, he's also il-informed. Why did he keep referring to "Coleridge-Taylor's Symphony no 1" as if Coleridge had gone on to compose further symphonies? I was hoping that studio guest Catherine Carr, who undertook her Ph.D. in the music of Coleridge-Taylor, would leap in and tell him that there isn't another one! Having met her, I can confirm that she's too polite and well-mannered, sadly! ;D Also, in referring to the Hiawatha jamborees that ran in the RAH under Sargent until 1939, he said that Coleridge did not make any money out of them because he had sold the rights to Novello for fifteen guineas. Wrong on two counts: he sold the rights only of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast for fifteen guineas, not the whole trilogy. Oh, and he'd been dead since 1912, which would also preclude him from cashing-in.
Yep, never let facts get in the way of inconsequential blather.
;)
There was a back-lash in the press against Novello following his early death (both Parry and Stanford weighed in). Sam wouldn't have had to teach and conduct as much as he did if he had royalties from
Hiawatha's Wedding Feast - apart from
The Death of Minnehaha he never reaped much financial reward from his compositional labours.
:(
