Sir Malcolm Sargent

To Mass. Went to Battersea to get mosaics but found room locked as flower arrangers not there. Contacted Pat and she will let me know when I can go again in the morning. Home for lunch. Played for 2.30 funeral at Caterham. No coffin! We were told very little about Carole apart from her love of travel and arranging trips through the Miller centre! I played Faure, Vierne, Moore and Handel. To preProm talk on Sargent - he was a Christian and stayed in England during the War working incredibly hard. First conducted at 14 and Henry Wood allowed him to conduct his composition. He saw himself as the music not the musicians for whom he had little empathy denying them contracts and pensions! No wonder they did not like him! I first saw him when I was aged 14 when my Dad arranged for both of us to sit in front of the huge Johannesburg Town Hall organ. Harry Stanton played the organ for The Planets and was shown how to do the glissando with both arms! For some reason we wore evening dress perhaps to blend in with the SABC orchestra who were not good and hated Sargent because he made them work! Sargent had come to visit the game reserve. Liz saw him often as a teenager at the Proms including the last night farewell speech. I think Beecham was rather unfair to him. I grew up with the 78s of Messiah. Super concert Sargent 500th Prom replicated. Stephen Disley on the organ. Schumann (I had the wrong score!) Berlioz, Cockaigne, Walton, Holst, Delius and Britten. Finished after 10. Andrew Davis made a speech. Home on bus and train quickly just before 11. Liz busy in Lourdes. The teenagers like Liz at Sargent proms are now the elderly prommers of today! Watched University challenge and Joanna's India.