Royal Philharmonic Orchestra With Vernon Handley & Guy Johnston Green And Pleasant Land Quintessentially English Orchestral Musi

Elgar: Serenade for Strings Walton: Cello Concerto Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.4 The nation’s favourite orchestra performing the best of English music. This festival embraces English music in all its rich and diverse range. It begins on a cheerful note with light-music classics that include the Devil’s Galop and Dambusters March. Leonard Slatkin – a noted devotee of British music – couples Holst’s ever-popular orchestral showpiece The Planets Suite with the brazen splendour of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast and leads a pair of concerts that focus on Elgar, one of which finds Nigel Kennedy returning to a concerto closely associated with him. Elgar also features in the choral works, with a profound spiritual journey at the heart of his masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius. Similarly deeply moving is Michael Tippett’s response to man’s inhumanity to his fellow man in A Child of Our Time; music set in the oratorio forms of Bach and Handel and updated through the use of Negro spirituals. 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s death. Two of his symphonies are conducted by British music legend Vernon Handley: the poignant ‘Pastoral’ Symphony (resonating the composer’s experiences on French battlefields in World War (I) and the explosive Fourth. Sir Andrew Davis, another stalwart advocate of British fare, couples Vaughan Williams’s evocative ‘London’ Symphony with Elgar’s ever-fascinating ‘Enigma’ Variations; and Paul Daniel leads Vaughan Williams’s reflective and ecstatic Fifth Symphony in the company of the musing and lyrical Cello Concerto of Gerald Finzi. Another concerto-rarity is the violin work by Delius, to which the scintillating ballet music from Holst’s The Perfect Fool offers an exuberant contrast. Colin Anderson International Record Review Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - The Full Resident Season: Tuesday 30 October, 2007: Green And Pleasant Land Tuesday 6 November, 2007: with Chloe Hanslip, violin Tuesday 20 November, 2007: with Elizabeth Watts, soprano Wednesday 19 December, 2007: Christmas Cracker Thursday 20 December, 2007: with the Joyful Company of Singers Thursday 14 February, 2008: Valentine's Love Classics Tuesday 19 February, 2008: with Tasmin Little, violin Sunday 30 March, 2008: Favourite Film and TV Moments Tuesday 1 April, 2008: Green And Pleasant Land Tuesday 13 May, 2008: Green And Pleasant Land