koganbot | (Reply)

From:

The Ferguson paragraph that precedes the one I quoted:

But aside from reminders, The Band Concert was a really marvelous little bit of nonsense, with a fine, tempered edge and the consistent ability to carry the fancy on, not letting the old dog die. The situation was that of a few musicians from the animal kingdom playing a job in some open-air stand - led, as I remember, by the mouse gent, who was most terribly baffled by a sleeve that flopped down over his baton in the sforzando passages, and by the tendency of his band to leave off following the beat and join in with a wandering duck, who was getting "Turkey In The Straw" out of a tin fife at a signal strength of about forty, beating it out with his foot, and not to be quelled either. I don't recall all the details now, but the main number was the "William Tell" overture, which was assisted by the elements, there coming up a fierce twister of wind along in the more dramatic passages, the band getting carried up in the air completely, scattering individually through the air but still playing music like the devil and on the beat, and finally coming down one by one into the coda, which wound up in a glory of sound and wreckage.
- 7 August 1935