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  • BBC Music Magazine

    Reynaldo Hahn

    Mar 18, 2021 6 minutes

    Sometime around 1907 the Duchess of Manchester gave a soirée in London in honour of the King and Queen. The music chosen for the occasion was Le Bal de Béatrice d’Este for wind band by the 33-year-old French composer Reynaldo Hahn and conducted by him. The Queen was enchanted and, after a pause for refreshments, asked for an encore. The King went off to play bridge, but returned shortly after. A courtier wondered whether, perhaps, some Offenbach? And so Reynaldo sang to his own accompaniment aria after aria by Offenbach, taking the King back to those happy, carefree days when, as Prince of

    Wales, he had so often escaped to Paris to be entertained by les petites femmes. If the Queen preferred Le Bal, Reynaldo thought that might have been simply because she was seriously deaf, and quite a few of the tunes were on the trumpet.

    At just 15, Hahn gave notice of the invaluable contribution he would make to

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