Ralph Vaughan Williams
English Folk Song Suite

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Christopher Seaman (Conductor)

Vaughan Williams has got to be one of the most quintessentially English composers of all time.

While Britain may not have such an obvious musical tradition as Germany or Italy, Vaughan Williams was keen to make sure it did not get forgotten as recorded music and radio began to overtake folk music as the most popular form of recreational music.

He spent years travelling around Britain collecting up folk songs and writing them down so that thye would not be lost, and many of these were incorporated into his music.

Although English folk music crops up throughout his work, it is in this particular piece that it is most obvious. Originally written for the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall, it was subsequently arranged for full orchestra by his pupil Gordon Jacob.

Edward William Elgar

Cello Concerto

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Yehudi Menuhin (Conductor)
Yoohong Lee (Cello)

Edward Elgar

Elgar's Cello Concerto became really famous after a recording made by Jacqueline Du Pre and Sir John Barbirolli in 1965.

A less well known fact about the piece is that, in addition to having conducted the most famous recording of the piece, at the age of 19 Barbirolli was also playing in the orchestra when Elgar himself conducted the first ever recording in 1919.

The Concerto was on the first things Elgar wrote after the First World War. He, like many European artists, had been profoundly affected by The Great War, and it was this climate which set the scene for the concerto's impassioned but mournful opening.

Gustav Holst

The Planets Suite
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vernon Handley (Conductor)

The Planets is a suite of seven pieces based on an astrological theme. Originally described as "mood pictures", each of the seven movements attempts to capture the mythical character of a celestial body.

The most brutal of the movements is the opening Mars, the Bringer of War. Although this is often cited as an example of Holst's horror at the First World War, he had actually finished writing it before the war began.

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, is another famous movement. The central slow tune was later used as a setting for the words of the hymn I vow to thee my country, written by Cecil Spring Rice in 1918 and sung at both Princess Diana's wedding and Funeral.