British music: from requiem to pastoral

Poignant 'party work' by Britten

At the beginning of World War II, Benjamin Britten received the honorable invitation to write a symphony in celebration of the 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire. That he then managed to honor the commission with a dramatic Sinfonia da requiem the Japanese never forgave him.

Johan Dalene and Elisabeth Hetherington

Thomas Adès challenges and yet puts the audience at ease in his melodic, contemporary work. Johan Dalene (*2000) returns to the Matinee with Adès' Violin Concerto 'Concentric paths' premiered almost twenty years ago. Ralph Vaughan Williams' symphonies always have 'a stitch loose' - in the sense that the composer never conforms to the common image we associate with 'the symphony'. This is also the case with his Third. In the closing bars we hear Elisabeth Hetherington's lone soprano in a song without words: a hushed Pastorale in which the composer sings off the horrific memories of World War I.