Elgar and Vaughan Williams
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Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis
On the 6th September 1910, a Three Choirs Festival audience settled down in Gloucester Cathedral to hear a world premiere: “a queer, mad work by an odd fellow from Chelsea” in the words of the Cathedral organist, Herbert Brewer. A haze of sound filled the Cathedral, like the ghost of a forgotten choir. A string orchestra whispered five rich, strange chords, and the basses plucked the first notes of the Third Mode Melody, a hymn tune from 1567 by the English renaissance composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585).
Ralph Vaughan Williams had spent the years 1904-1906 editing The New English Hymnal. “Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues” he wrote later. With the players divided into three separately-located groups, the Tallis Fantasia plays freely with spaces and echoes. It’s as if the distance – past or future? – is singing the music back to us. Meanwhile the full string orchestra weaves ancient melodies and modern harmonies into a sweeping, often passionate tapestry of sound. Timeless and ever-new, passionate and yet deeply tranquil, the Tallis Fantasia is one of the supreme achievements of 20th century music.
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, Op.31
Prologue – Pastoral – Nocturne – Elegy – Dirge – Hymn – Sonnet – Epilogue
After three years in the USA, Benjamin Britten arrived back in Britain in April 1942. Within weeks, he had a commission from the BBC, writing for the RAF Symphony Orchestra. Its brilliant young horn player, Dennis Brain wasted no time in asking Britten for a concerto, but what actually emerged was a sequence of six “nocturnes” for horn, tenor and string orchestra. Peter Pears, Brain, and the conductor Walter Goehr gave the premiere at the Wigmore Hall on 15th October 1943.
Britten wrote the Prologue and Epilogue solely for the horn’s “natural” notes (played without valves, and to modern ears, eerily off-key). In between come six songs in which the horn and singer serve as each other’s shadow, guide and doppelgänger through six different poems, chosen by Britten with help from the critic and novelist Edward Sackville-West. As Sackville-West put it:
The subject is Night and its prestigia [conjuring tricks]: the lengthening shadow, the distant bugle at sunset, the Baroque panoply of the starry sky, the heavy angels of sleep; but also the cloak of evil – the worm in the heart of the rose, the sense of sin in the heart of man. The whole sequence forms an Elegy or Nocturnal (as Donne would have called it), resuming the thoughts and images suitable to evening.
Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)
Music for Strings
Allegro moderato, energico – Andante molto sostenuto – Allegro molto
“Do you know, in the course of my life I have been three things,” Sir Arthur Bliss told an interviewer, shortly before his 75th birthday. “I have been ahead of the times, of the times and now behind the times. But I don’t in myself feel any different”. In truth, Bliss’s whole career was marked by his experiences in the Great War (Bliss was wounded on the Somme in 1916, and gassed at Cambrai in 1918; his brother Kennard had been killed in action in 1916). Sometimes he confronted it directly: at other times he reacted against the tragedy, in dazzling and often playful acts of musical defiance.
Bliss’s Music for Strings finds him at the top of his game: music in which a passionate, sometimes melancholy spirit flashes and surges behind the bold, streamlined profile of a bravura showpiece for string orchestra. “The very wish to create is a romantic urge, and music the romantic art par excellence” said Bliss. “So Music for Strings, in spite of its neutral title, is a romantic work, and it received its first performance in a romantic setting, the summer Salzburg Festival of 1935, when Adrian Boult conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert of British music.”
Frederick Delius (1862–1934) arr. Eric Fenby
Late Swallows
“When once you have reached the height…there is a delightful feeling of elation in sailing through the gold and silver clouds. It is, Delius, rather like your music – a little intangible, sometimes, but always very beautiful. I should have liked to stay there for ever.” So Edward Elgar described the aeroplane journey he took to meet Frederick Delius in France, in the last year of both men’s lives. In his long voluntary exile at Grez-sur-Loing, this Bradford-born son of German parents, had become – in Michael Kennedy’s words – “the poet of regret for the vanished hour and hedonistic delight”.
Delius composed his only string quartet during the First World War, and it was premiered at the Aeolian Hall in London in November 1916. The war had forced the composer and his wife Jelka from their beloved home in rural France, and as Jelka told Delius’s assistant and biographer Eric Fenby, “When we were away from home, Fred missed the swallows most”. Fenby made this arrangement of the quartet’s slow movement for string orchestra in 1963 at the request of the conductor John Barbirolli: “an autumnal soliloquy in sound conjured up by thoughts of the swallows darting to and fro from the eaves of the house and studios at Grez”.
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Introduction & Allegro for Strings, Op. 47
“In Cardiganshire I thought of writing a brilliant piece for string orchestra. On the cliff, between blue sea and blue sky, thinking out my theme, there came up to me the sound of singing.”
This was how Edward Elgar introduced his new work to its first public audience at London’s Queen’s Hall in March 1905 with the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra. In his programme note he recalled that the songs were too far away to reach him distinctly, but that their harmonic structure led him to believe they were characteristically Welsh.
He made a quick sketch of what he heard – but it was to be another three years before the seed of those songs would germinate, grow and blossom into one of the finest pieces ever written for string orchestra. The stimulus came when, after moving his home from Malvern to Hereford, he heard a similar song coming from somewhere deep in the Wye Valley and remembered his earlier sketch.
The Introduction & Allegro – or “the string thing”, as Lady Elgar dubbed it – involves several original and intricate features and, as he confided in a friend, “all sorts of japes and counterpoint”.
Alongside the string orchestra Elgar includes a string quartet, as would have been the practice for an old-style concerto grosso. But in this work the roles of the smaller group of players and the orchestra itself become much more subtle and interchangeable as the music progresses. Elgar also dropped the idea, traditional to sonata form, of the section which develops the work’s opening statements. Instead, he substitutes what he cheerfully described as “the devil of a fugue”.
John Wilson
John Wilson is in demand at the highest level across the globe, having conducted many of the world’s finest orchestras over the past 30 years. In 2018 he relaunched Sinfonia of London: described as ‘the most exciting thing currently happening on the British orchestral scene’ (The Arts Desk), Wilson and the Sinfonia’s much-anticipated BBC Proms debut in 2021 was praised as ‘truly outstanding’ (The Guardian) with its ‘revelatory music-making’ (The Times). They are now highly sought-after across the UK, regularly returning to the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival and London’s Barbican Centre among other festivals.
Wilson’s large and varied discography with Sinfonia of London has received near-universal critical acclaim, and in the autumn of 2024 they released their twenty-fourth album since 2019. Their recordings have earned several awards, including numerous BBC Music Magazine Awards for recordings of Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp (2020), Respighi’s Roman Trilogy (2021), Dutilleux’s Le Loup (2022), Oklahoma! (2024) and a disc of works by Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius and Elgar which won both the Orchestral Award and Recording of the Year. The Observer described the Respighi recording as “Massive, audacious and vividly played” and The Times declared it one of the three “truly outstanding accounts of this trilogy” of all time, after those by Toscanini (1949) and Muti (1984).
Born in Gateshead, Wilson studied composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music where, in 2011, he was made a Fellow. In March 2019, John Wilson was awarded the prestigious ISM Distinguished Musician Award for his services to music and in 2021 was appointed Henry Wood Chair of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music.
Laurence Kilsby
“A young singer to watch” (The Times), British tenor Laurence Kilsby is rapidly gaining international recognition for his vivid stage presence, expressive musicianship, and wide-ranging repertoire.
In the 2025/26 season, Laurence makes his Glyndebourne Festival debut as the Novice in Billy Budd, sings Lurcanio in Ariodante at Opéra de Versailles, and returns to the BBC Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo. He performs the Matthäus-Passion with the Concertgebouworkest and Klaus Mäkelä, tours the UK with Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings alongside Sinfonia of London and John Wilson, and makes his US concert debut with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in Beethoven Symphony No. 9 conducted by Raphaël Pichon.
Continuing his regular collaboration with Pichon and Ensemble Pygmalion, Laurence joins them for a tour of the Matthäus-Passion and performances at the Adelaide Festival. He also tours Handel’s Theodora with Jupiter Ensemble, and appears in recital with pianist Ella O’Neill at both Madrid’s Fundación Juan March and the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris. His debut album with O’Neill, AWAKENINGS, was released last season.
A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and ABRSM Vocal Scholar at the Royal College of Music, Laurence was a member of the Opéra national de Paris studio in 2022/23. He won First Prize at both the Wigmore Hall / Bollinger International Song Competition (2022) and the Cesti Competition (Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik), and was earlier awarded the Kathleen Ferrier Society Bursary for Young Singers.
Christopher Parkes
Christopher Parkes is solo horn of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Principal Horn of the John Wilson Orchestra. He has previously held positions in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Principal Horn, 2008-10) and the London Philharmonic Orchestra (3rd Horn, 2004-2008). He has been a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama since 2012.
Other orchestral engagements have included performing as principal horn with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Philharmonia, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Munich Philharmonic and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Solo appearances have included the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony, with conductors including Gianandrea Noseda and Daniel Harding.
He has performed chamber music with artists such as Anne Sofie von Otter, Ian Bostridge and Pierre Laurent Aimard and with ensembles such as Superbrass, Stockholm Syndrome and Fine Arts Brass (Solo Horn, 2002- ).
Chris has played principal horn for recording artists such as Paul McCartney and George Michael and has appeared on film soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, Batman: The Dark Knight Rises and on computer games such as James Bond: Blood Stone and the Uncharted franchise.
Chris studied at Chetham’s School of Music and Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
Sinfonia of London
Sinfonia of London is an award-winning orchestra, led by its Artistic Director, conductor John Wilson
Often described as a ‘super-orchestra’ (ArtsDesk), it brings together outstanding musicians from the UK and abroad, creating exceptional musical experiences for audiences either through live events or via an ever-growing catalogue of recordings.
Launched in 2018, Sinfonia of London revived the legendary studio orchestra of the same name, founded in 1955. It made its live debut in 2021 at the BBC Proms and has appeared there on an annual basis since. It has subsequently appeared throughout the UK, including at London’s Barbican Centre and at the Aldeburgh Festival. In 2024 it was named as an Artistic Partner of the Glasshouse, Gateshead. It will make its international debut this autumn at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, frequently cited as one of the world’s greatest concert halls.
The orchestra has quickly built a celebrated range of over 30 recordings on the Chandos label, covering a wide range of music from the likes of Korngold, Respighi, Ravel, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Britten, Walton, Bliss, and Rodgers & Hammerstein, with the orchestra’s most recent release being Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady.
BBC Music Magazine has said ‘Wilson and his hand-picked band of musicians continue to strike gold with almost anything they turn their hands to’ while The Mail on Sunday declared the album of English Music for Strings ‘dazzling… some of the finest string playing ever put on disc by a British orchestra’.
Alongside outstanding reviews (‘leaves music critics ready to die for joy’, in the words of iNews), the orchestra has received five BBC Music Magazine Awards in five years, and, in 2022, a Gramophone Award
The orchestra is regularly featured on BBC Radio 3, BBC Four, iPlayer and Marquee TV.
Find out more about the orchestra and forthcoming concerts and recordings at sinfoniaoflondon.com
