The Exeter Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Serna is delighted to announce

This Glorious Land, a concert of 20^th Century English music, on Saturday 30 November 2024 at 7:30 pm

in Southernhay United Reformed Church, Exeter.

 The concert is dedicated to the memory of Brian Northcott, our esteemed Musical Director from 2005 to 2019 and dedicated proponent of English composers, who died very recently; it features evocative works by three of the greatest – Holst, Butterworth and Elgar – written between 1906 and 1912.

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) loved the countryside as a child in Gloucestershire, played the violin (which he did not enjoy), piano and trombone at school and studied at the Royal College of Music alongside his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams. Greatly enthused by the renaissance of English folk songs, he wrote A Somerset Rhapsody in 1906 while teaching at St Paul’s Girls’ School, London. With catchy melodies based on folk tunes, it remains one of his most popular orchestral pieces, alongside the later and larger The Planets suite.

George Butterworth MC (1885-1916) served with distinction in France in the First World War; he was lost in action before fulfilling his musical potential, but left a rich legacy. He too was inspired by the English folk song revival of the early 1900s and his work clearly influenced Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi and Ernest Moeran. He wrote the bucolic A Shropshire Lad, Rhapsody for Orchestra as a postlude to six eponymous songs and it was first performed at the Leeds Festival in 1913 to considerable acclaim.

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), like Holst and Butterworth, shared a great love of the countryside. His eagerly anticipated Symphony No 1 in A-flat major was a decade in the making, but an instant success when premiered in Manchester and London in 1908; it received 100 performances internationally over the next 13 months. The Manchester Guardian described it as “sublime…the noblest ever penned” and the maestro himself modestly, responded: “There is music in the air. All you have to do is take as much as you require.”