A Night Under the Stars: Crown and Country
We are delighted to announce that this year's 'A Night Under The Stars' concert at the Southbank's Royal Festival Hall will take place on Thursday 8th November, 7.30pm.
To book tickets please call or email us:
Booking Line 020 7592 1856 tickets@passage.org.uk
Click here for booking form
Musical programme
Handel: Zadok the Priest (1727)
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending (1920)
Vaughan Williams: ‘Seventeen Come Sunday’ (from Folk Song Suite, 1923)
Elgar: Cello Concerto (1919)
Elgar: Nimrod (from Enigma Variations, 1899)
Walton: Crown Imperial (1937)
Performers
Julian Lloyd Webber (cello)
Tasmin Little (violin)
Orion Orchestra
Orion Chorus
Toby Purser (conductor)
Crown and Country
Reflecting a mood of national pride as the year of the London Olympics and The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee draws to a close, A Night Under The Stars presents an evening of English classical favourites. From stirring music capturing the very essence of great state occasions to lyrical evocations of rural England and an unsurpassed elegy for a time gone by, Crown and Country features some of Britain’s most loved music.
The programme includes two of the country’s favourite works, which regularly feature at the top the ClassicFM Hall of Fame - Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending and Elgar’s Cello Concerto. They feature iconic soloists who have each earned the status of ‘national treasure’, and whose affinity with these works is second to none: violinist Tasmin Little and cellist Julian Lloyd Webber.
Zadok the Priest
In 1727 German-born Georg Frideric Handel’s first commission, as a newly naturalized British citizen, was to write the music for the coronation of King George II. The best loved of the resulting 4 anthems is surely Zadok the Priest. This wonderful music has accompanied one of the most significant points of the ceremony – leading to the moment of crowning - at every British coronation since.
The Lark Ascending
Regularly topping the ClassicFM ‘Hall of Fame’, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending conjures the English landscape like no other work. The violin portrays the soaring and swooping of that most tuneful of songbirds, the skylark, while snatches of dance tunes heard from the orchestra remind us of the human world below.
Seventeen come Sunday (from Folk Song Suite)
Vaughan Williams spent a number of years travelling the country collecting and notating the folk songs of his native land. He transformed these tunes into orchestral compositions, creating music that would express the essence of England in orchestral form. This opening march from his Folk Song Suite features complex rhythms which are notorious with musicians for keeping them on their toes.
Cello Concerto
Edward Elgar’s very personal response to the ‘fin de siècle’ mood of the time was his hugely emotional Cello Concerto - a poignant elegy for a lost era, in which the soloist runs a gamut of emotions from reflective to sprightly to resilient, and the work ends with a flourish of impassioned defiance.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)
Elgar’s Enigma Variations is a collection of musical portraits of friends and family. ‘Nimrod’, is the very heart of the work, capturing a conversation between Elgar and his publisher A.J. Jaeger, who persuaded his friend to persevere as a composer. It possesses one of the most immediate and captivating tunes in English music. This year, A Night Under The Stars falls just 3 days before Remembrance Sunday, where Nimrod traditionally features as part of the Cenotaph ceremony.
Crown Imperial
The programme closes with William Walton’s coronation march, Crown Imperial. First performed at the crowning of King George VI in 1937, the work was heard more recently at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Walton conveys the splendour of great state occasions as evocatively as Handel and Elgar before him, but he also infuses the music with his own individual flair, expressing the joy and energy of a new era.
Tickets
Concert tickets:£60, £50, £39, £29, £19, £12
Pre Concert Reception tickets £30
Post Concert Gala Reception £65
Booking Line 020 7592 1856
tickets@passage.org.uk