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A sequence of great classical music with an English connection brimming with nostalgic tunes.Fittingly opening with Otto Nicolai’s entertaining take on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor.
A gentle clarinet solo introduces Butterworth’s evocation of the English countryside The Banks of Green Willow.
English classic light music follows with Ronald Binge’s The Watermill and The Elizabethan Serenade well-used for TV signature tunes!
After the yearning aria from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas Dido’s lament “Remember Me” with our own Liz Williams as soloist the first half concludes with more popular radio tunes next composed by Eric Coates “Knightsbridge” “By the Sleepy Lagoon” and “Calling All Workers” will be familiar to both young and old.
The second half follows a “Proms” style of programming with a sequence of well-known works. Walton’s “Crown Imperial” march was commissioned for the coronation of the Queen’s father King George VI in Westminster Abbey in 1937 at its centre a great tune at once glorious and solemn. Vaughan Williams “The Lark Ascending” (soloist ????) soars above the landscape then we launch into the Last Night of the Proms finale with Henry Wood’s “Fantasia on British Sea Songs”.
At the climax sing along to the famous trio “Rule Britannia!” set by Thomas Arne in 1740 Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance No.1” the first of a set of four marches composed between 1901 and 1907 with the rousing “Land of Hope and Glory” chorus and finally Hubert Parry’s 1916 setting of William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem”.
We play out with that most evocative of Eric Coates’ compositions The Dam Busters March composed for the 1955 film providing a fitting conclusion to an historical celebration without precedence.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Cresset Centre, Cresset Centre, Rightwell E, Peterborough PE3 8DX, United Kingdom, Peterborough
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