Proms 2015 Prom 17: Hallé – Debussy, Vaughan Williams & Elgar

Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé champion Vaughan Williams’s neglected oratorio Sancta civitas – an ecstatic vision of post-apocalyptic salvation. It’s a piece made for the huge space of the Royal Albert Hall, where its heavenly trumpets and choirs can swell to full force. Described by Elgar’s wife as ‘vast in design and supremely beautiful’, his Second Symphony took a while to win public affection, but is now almost as cherished as Debussy’s evocative tone-poem depicting the lascivious thoughts of a sleepy faun – a work the composer Pierre Boulez has hailed as signalling the beginning of modern music.