Prom 53: Elgar's The Music Makers

Another chance to hear Sir Andrew Davis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Chorus and Dame Sarah Connolly. Plus Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia and Hugh Wood’s Comus.

Presented from the Royal Albert Hall by Martin Handley

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Hugh Wood: Scenes from Comus, Op.6 +

Interval - Proms Plus Talk: Musicologist Kate Kennedy discusses aspects of Elgar's The Music Makers

Elgar: The Music Makers, Op.69*

Stacey Tappan (soprano) +
Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)*
Anthony Gregory (tenor) +
BBC Symphony Chorus*
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)

Sir Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly in Elgar’s last great choral work.

The Music Makers is the musical culmination of a career, drawing together quotations from many of the composer’s best-loved pieces, including the ‘Enigma’ Variations and Sea Pictures, and weaving them into a musical manifesto for the power of art.

The concert also includes Vaughan Williams’s luminous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for double string orchestra and Hugh Wood’s lyrical setting of scenes from Milton’s pastoral masque Comus.