Summary

A fascinating programme of music which traces three major English composers responses to landscape and national identity. Vaughan Williams’ unique pastoral elegy Fios Campi (Flowers of the Field) explores a landscape of physical and spiritual longing, whilst Holst’s Fields of Sorrow is a cold and bleak emotional journey. Using the same Ausonius text at Holst, Harrison Birtwistle demonstrates a highly individual continuation of the English pastoral tradition that has its roots in the rediscovery of landscape as a creative force.

The concert at Milton Court will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

In Conversation – Cambridge 6.30pm (free to ticket holders)

Distinguished writer and critic, Fiona Maddocks talks to David Butcher about her new book, Wild Tracks, a conversation diary with composer Harrison Birtwistle.