Summary

Two great Bitish works for voice and string orchestra appear in the second Proms Saturday Matinee, which focuses on Britten and his peers. Sarah Connolly joins conductor Sian Edwards and Britten Sinfonia in Britten’s searing final vocal work, Phaedra, and a rare performance of Lennox Berkeley’s intensely felt Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila, premiered by Kathleen Ferrier in 1948.

In addition to featuring classics of the string orchestra repertoire in Holts’s St Paul’s Suite and Tippett’s Fantasia concertante on a Theme of Coreli, the programme includes Britten’s inventive Prelude and Fugue for 18-part string orchestra.