Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor of 1921 was a game-changer for English choral music – a piece whose pastoral harmonies may sound like the stuff of English soil and summertime, but whose distinctive atmosphere reconnected the country’s music with a tradition that had lain dormant for four centuries. Here, the Mass’s movements are interspersed with contemporary works that harbour the same sense of peace and spirituality.
After the interval Howard Goodall conducts the European premiere of his own Unconditional Love. Written in lockdown, the cantata was conceived as ‘a work of gratitude, of memorial and of hope for a world rebuilt’ after the pain of the pandemic. This radiant piece from one of the UK’s most communicative composers sets poetry written in times of hardship, much of it in 2020 and some by Goodall himself.
This concert is part of a weekend of music from the BBC Orchestras celebrating the BBC Centenary.
