Vaughan Williams: a Celebration

Programme

The Bach Choir performs an all-Vaughan Williams programme to mark the 150^th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Ralph Vaughan Williams holds an unrivalled position in the history of British music, and in the hearts of many classical music fans. For The Bach Choir though, it’s personal – he sang in the choir for many years, and was their Music Director in the 1920s.

His overture The Wasps, commissioned for an Ancient Greek play but sounding quintessentially English, paves the way for a rare performance of The Garden of Proserpine. This work for orchestra, chorus and soprano sets a poem by Swinburne, atheist enfant terrible of late Victorian poetry. Vaughan Williams clothes Swinburne’s longing for the oblivion of death in music of great tenderness and beauty.

“Behold, the sea itself” – once heard, the magnificent opening bars of the Sea Symphony will not be forgotten. Chorus, soprano and baritone soloists and orchestra sing of ships and their captains, wind and waves, ocean voyages and the voyage of every human soul, in music so vivid you can almost taste the sea spray in the air.