Stockport Symphony Orchestra - The English One

Moeran  Lonely Waters
Bax  The Happy Forest
Elgar   Symphony No 2

Conductor - Robin Wallington

Robin Wallington has a particular affinity for English music and this is a programme dear to his heart.

The Moeran and the Bax may be unfamilar but, trust us on this, they are both delightful pieces in the English tradition and deserve much more frequent outings.

An Anglo-Irish vicar's son of the first half of the 20th century, Ernest Moeran is a late addition to the raft of English composers heavily influenced by folk-song.  Based, typically for Moeran, on folk songs, Lonely Waters is a gentle and nostalgic orchestral rhapsody in the tradition of  Delius and Vaughan Williams

Bax is more familiar territory and known, above all, for Tintagel.  Like Lonely Waters, the Bax is another piece of anthropomorphic bucolic imagery but with rhythms which are  are light and dance-like, and a middle section, where Bax shows his romantic side.

And, of course, what concert of English music would be complete without Elgar? His second symphony is number 36 in Classic FM's Classical Music Recordings You Must Own.  A Larghetto which is one of the great Romantic slow movements is one to listen for in a symphony Elgar called "the passionate pilgrimage of the soul",