Details
Corn Exchange Theatre
Tuesday Market Place
King's Lynn
Norfolk
PE30 1JW
England
Programme
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony no.5 in D major
~ Interval ~
Edward Elgar – Sea Pictures, Op.37
Malcolm Arnold – English Dances Set 2, Op.33
Malcolm Arnold – English Dances Set 1, Op.27
Performers
Monika-Evelin Liiv – mezzo-soprano
Philip Hesketh – Conductor
Philippa Barton – Leader
Norfolk Symphony Orchestra
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
Aspects of England
Our vision of England has many faces and this music seeks to express them. In this programme we play quintessentially English music by three composers, each from a different generation: Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Malcolm Arnold. In Elgar’s song cycle Sea Pictures, he sets words by five different poets. The music basks in the late-romantic glow of the Edwardian Era and expresses his deep feelings about the sea and our relationship to it. His younger colleague, Ralph Vaughan Williams, like many contemporaries such as Bartok and Villa-Lobos, was determined to use the tunes and harmonies of folk song as a basis for a new musical language. After the terrifying violence of his 4th Symphony, his 5th comes like a healing balm, more reminiscent of the Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Full of peace and quietude, it contains some of his most radiantly beautiful music. Post War England is represented by Malcolm Arnold, a composer often better known for his lighter music. The two sets of English Dances contain a wide and richly diverse variety of styles from the hauntingly melancholy to the hilarious and will bring the concert to a riotous close.
Majestic, brooding, cheeky and achingly beautiful…