Dear Colleagues It is the greatest possible comfort to me in my absence to have continual evidence of your artistic progress, both by report and by actual experience. Though it is difficult to pick up an Edinburgh broadcast in the south, I have now heard your performances three times, and quite enough has reached me and other listeners to assure me that our work - the work you and I stand for - cannot fail to convince the world at large that the Reid Symphony Orchestra is an institution that must go on. Your performance of Elgar's Falstaff [on Thursday 17 November conducted by Stewart Deas] was very brilliant: the wireless revealed great clarity in every complexity of counterpoint: the strings produced the most rapid passages with crystalline clearness and - a point which I did not know broadcasting could make, - the beautiful tone and style of the leader [Mr Watt Jupp] - as shewn in solo passages - was not more clearly that of an individual player than the tone of tutti strings in rapid as in sustained passages was that of a chorus. In other words, even the wireless made it manifest that we are an orchestra throughout, to every desk. Broadcasting usually favours the wind; but the beauty of our string-tuttis has come through very well indeed. ... Yours as present as doctors permit DONALD FRANCIS TOVEY