Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending

With the sublime The Lark Ascending as its centrepiece, this collection illustrates the way that Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries expressed their national identity, drawing inspiration from folk song, landscape, poetry and the rich history of British music. With favourites by Elgar, Delius, Butterworth and Walton––including Elgar’s unforgettable Introduction and Allegro and Delius’s Summer Night on the River––the works gathered here are romantic, nostalgic and quintessentially British.

‘Made in Britain’ is a rich and nostalgic journey through English music straddling the turn of the 20th century, with John Wilson, today’s leading proponent of British Music, at the helm of the UK’s oldest orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.

‘Made in Britain’ celebrates a rich period of English music surrounding the turn of the 20th century, including evergreens such as Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending (for years No 1 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame) and Elgar’s Salut d’amour, as well as the folk-inspired Two English Idylls by Butterworth and English Folk Song Suite by Vaughan Williams. The programme opens with Walton’s commedia dell’arte overture Scapino and closes with the Nell Gwyn Overture by Edward German, music director of London’s Globe Theatre from 1888. Along the way we take A Walk to the Paradise Garden from Delius’ opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, and stroll through Bax’s woodland evocation The Happy Forest.

Overseeing this celebration is today’s leading interpreter of British Music, John Wilson conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra which, founded in 1840, is steeped in this glorious musical tradition. Hard on the heels of Wilson’s high-profile headlining of the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, BBC Radio 3’s Light Fantastic Weekend, and a televised appearance with his eponymous orchestra at the BBC Proms, Made in Britain catches a prevailing mood and taps into today’s huge appetite for an evocative era.

Classics is proud to announce the release The Very Best of Nigel Kennedy. This 2-CD set celebrates the multiple facets of the award-winning, multi-million record selling violinist, featuring works from his twin passions, classical and jazz.

The first disc focuses on classical music, featuring Kennedy’s iconic recordings of the best-loved violin repertoire: movements from the great concerti including Bruch and Beethoven; stand-alone works such as Zigeunerweisen and Lark Ascending; and from his landmark recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Kennedy’s 1989 release of the baroque masterpiece, named the best-selling classical recording of all time by the Guinness Book of World Records, topped the UK Classical Charts for over a year, reached #3 on the UK Pop Album chart and has sold more than two-million copies world wide. At one point, Nigel was selling more records a week than the combined total of the other 19 records in the UK Classical Sales Chart.

The second disc features tracks from his award-winning and critically acclaimed jazz and pop recordings: standards from his Blue Note Sessions album, performances of his own pop and fusion compositions with the Nigel Kennedy Quintet and with Polish klezmer trio Kroke, as well as tracks from his most recent EMI Classics release Sssh!, including his collaboration with Culture Club singer Boy George.

Now rightfully acknowledged as a towering figure, Vaughan Williams was the first composer to write in the English language, using folksong in the Norfolk Rhapsody, a Tudor hymn in the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and absorbing and transforming his influences in the stunningly beautiful Serenade to Music.

During the 16th and 17th centuries England had been a leading participant in the delevopment of European music, but after the early death of Purcell in 1695, music in England came to be dominated by musicians of foreign origin: notably Handel and Mendelssohn. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) is the best-known of a new generation of composers that came after Elgar and made up what became known as the English Musical Renaissance. Along with Gustav Holst, Vaughan Williams travelled the country collecting and preserving English folksong traditions, and was largely responsible for the revival of interest in folksong. So strong was his interest in the subject that, like Holst, folksong was absorbed into his compositional style and was to influence his concert music, giving it a uniquely English quality. Starting with the evocative Thomas Tallis Fantasia, (RVW's look back at his great 16th-century predecessor) this set contains some of the composer's best-known and most-loved music, including the popular Fantasia on Greensleeves and the beautiful Lark Ascending.