It was
concerts as well as two sets of Prizewinners concerts. during the April 1955 Festival that Radio Hong Kong was able for the first time to broadcast excerpts from concerts during actual performances. Hitherto promoters of concerts had had an understandable fear of harming the "gate" by permitting such simultaneous broadcasts, but the experiment of broad- casting The Latvian Concerto by Hong Kong composer Harry Ore was a success on all counts.
In the 1956 Festival the first simultaneous broadcast of a combined choral and orchestral concert was made from the Loke Yew Hall of the University. The work was "The Creation" by Haydn and employed the combined forces of the Sino-British Orchestra and the Hong Kong Singers, including three soloists. Other new musical ventures during the 1956 Festival season were the recording of two more concerts involving local com- posers, the Sino-British Modern Chinese Music Group concert which included a quintet by Lin Sheng Shih, and the concert by the Choral Group which commemorated the 30th Anniversary of his arrival in Hong Kong of Elisio Gualdi and in which all the items were composed by Gualdi himself. Many of these recordings have attracted the interest of overseas radio organizations including the B.B.C. and the Societé de La Radiodiffusion Suisse.
In lighter vein was the wedding of music and drama in a broadcast of Dr. S. I. Hsiung's "Lady Precious Stream”. The original and attractive incidental music by William Rea was specially recorded by the Hong Kong Concert Orchestra, being the first occasion incidental music has been "commissioned" by Radio Hong Kong.
60. Distinguished musical visitors to the studios were Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, Maurice Clare, Marta Zalan, and Louis Kentner. All gave broadcast recitals before invited audiences, which included a high proportion of students.
Apart from visits by concert artists, there is another type of musical visitor whose contributions are of unusual interest. These are the Examiners from the Royal Schools of Music in London. Dr. Herbert Wiseman in 1955 and Michael
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