Elgar’s Froissart overture throbs with national pride and swagger, while Walton’s Second Symphony sustains an altogether darker, more contemplative mood.

Chloë Hanslip is the soloist in Vaughan Williams’s rarely heard Concerto accademico – a work whose lyrical slow movement and dancing finale are anything but ‘academic’.

The concert also features Welsh composer Grace Williams’s ecstatic, neo-Straussian Fairest of Stars for soprano and orchestra, a musical celebration of Milton’s poetry.

Walton
Spitfire Prelude and Fugue 8’

Vaughan Williams
Concerto accademico 17’

Grace Williams
Fairest of Stars 15’

interval

Elgar
Overture ‘Froissart’ 15’

Walton
Symphony No. 2 30’

Chloë Hanslip violin
Ailish Tynan soprano

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Tadaaki Otaka conductor