Pomp and Circumstance? Larks ascending? Here in Manchester, we've always done British music a bit differently. The Haslingden-born Alan Rawsthorne takes a Lowry-like street scene and turns it into five minutes of bustling fun, while Edward Elgar pours out his very soul in the ionately romantic Violin Concerto. It's all terribly un-English; but that won't bother our soloist, the magnificent Canadian violinist James Ehnes.
Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has spent a lifetime with this music, so there's no greater interpreter of the visionary final symphony that Ralph Vaughan Williams. An 85-year old composer stares boldly into the future: what he shows us might surprise you.