Bryn

You have the weakest link.....Good Bye 

It's established that 161 is by Prokofiev but it's not ballet music. And what is happening in 151? It's telling a story (listen to the rocking rhythms and loud horn trill towards the end).

AHA!! No 148 is this...

Maz Reger: 4 Tondichtungen nach Arnold Bocklin, Op. 128 (4 Tone Poems after Arnold Bocklin): III. Der Toteninsel

Baz 

Well, I suppose there might be a hint of jazziness there, but Gershwin is not the influence most commonly cited in relation to this work.

Oh, and no, it is not by Gershwin himself, either. Wrong side of the Pond.

No, please let us not descend to Gherkschwin! He was not and never will be classical.


The first part suggests Arnold Bax. But his was requited or was it - and does "Bax" really suggest "Bach"? Ah - it could be Lambert.

Anyway here for what they are worth are our vague musings about the outstandings:

142 an Englishman of the fifties - but a not incapable one?
145 frightfully modernistic yet not wholly unattractive - possibly Yun
151 another Englishman of the fifties - not Coates it has been established - "telling a story"
159 some almost pantonalistical piano - not Schoenberg, perhaps Krenek - no, a North American lady - presumably Beach
161 something orchestral and satirical by Procofieff
164 solo trumpet with orchestra - no idea
165 some kind of piano concerto, slightly slushy, perhaps French - "a regular at the Proms"
167 classical mandolin music - no idea
168 orchestral in Romanian style - but could be Hungarian and Kodaly
169 more Russian orchestral? - no idea

I do think the points should be awarded to Mr Thompson, who has at least identified the composer and work as Respighi's Pines of Rome, though not as yet the movement.

As in most mammals, sexuality in humans is not binary in nature. There is something of a continuum. John Ireland was, by all accounts, infatuated with Ms. Perkin, the concerto's dedicatee and first performer. However, not long after she gave that performance, she took up with a male architect, and soon married him. Not long after that her she withdrew from her role as concert pianist.

Since his last housekeeper, a woman, destroyed many of his documents following his death, the matter of Ireland's sexuality is uncertain to this day. Perhaps he 'swung both ways'? Who knows? Who cares?

I am happy to reconfirm Tony's successful solution to the many clues I offered re. Puzzle 165. Unfortunately the adjudicator appears to have been so transfixed by a perceived possibility of a link between the work featured, and that of the great Jewish American composer Jacob Gershvin, that he quite missed Tony's solution, twice.