Dateline: March 2006
EXCITING NEWS OF NEW ROBERT FARNON RECORDINGS!
David Farnon has recently been involved in checking and cataloguing all of his late father’s musical works, and a number of unpublished compositions have been discovered. But the most exciting news concerns the first two symphonies composed by Robert Farnon when he was a young man, back in Canada. They received several performances in North America at the time, but have been ignored for over sixty years.
It seems that Robert Farnon did not wish them to be performed again during his lifetime, because he always replied to enquiries by saying that the scores had been ‘lost’. Happily this is not true, and when the discovery of Bob’s first and second symphonies was announced to RFS members at our meeting last November, Michael Dutton immediately said that he was willing to try and arrange for all three Robert Farnon symphonies to be recorded later this year, for release on a Vocalion CD.
Since then the wheels have been set in motion to get scores prepared, and the latest news we have as we go to press is that the sessions are likely to take place this summer, with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by John Wilson.
No doubt we will have further details to report in our June magazine.