Inside Classical: The Lark Ascending

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BBC Classical Music Channel

Inside Classical

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Music: Classical

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

BBC orchestras and guests perform in some of the UK's most prestigious concert halls.

The BBC's orchestras are joined by world-renowned singers and musicians at some of the UK's most beautiful concert halls, performing the best in contemporary and classical music.

The Lark Ascending

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Inside Classical: Series 1: The Lark Ascending

Series 1

BBC Four - Inside Classical, Series 1, The Lark Ascending

Captivating performances from the BBC Philharmonic and soloist Zoë Beyers.

Vaughan Williams’ pastoral masterpiece is stunningly performed by the BBC Philharmonic and soloist Zoë Beyers, alongside works by Elgar and Wagner.

Inside Classical: The Lark Ascending comes from Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and features the BBC Philharmonic conducted by the internationally renowned and Olivier Award-winning conductor Mark Wigglesworth. 
 
The programme features two visionary and radical works by English composers - Sir Edward Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. The concert opens with a mysteriously resonant orchestral ritual by Richard Wagner: the shimmering prelude to his last music-drama work, Parsifal.
 
Ralph Vaughan Williams’ most beloved piece, The Lark Ascending, features a solo violin soaring over the orchestra, and the music’s aching, avian lyricism - inspired by George Meredith’s poem - sears itself into the imagination. More than a century after it was written it still flies free of musical convention, straight to the heart. The soloist tonight is the BBC Philharmonic’s leader, Zoë Beyers. 
 
The Lark Ascending was dedicated to and first performed by the violinist Marie Hall, who also studied under Sir Edward Elgar from just 10 years old. And it’s Elgar’s Second Symphony that is the finale for the concert. The four movements of this 50-minute-long symphony are troubled, grieving, violent, and consoling: the whole piece is a turbulent search for an elusive ‘spirit of delight’. 

Elgar conducted the premiere in 1911 and Mark Wigglesworth steps into the composer’s shoes with the BBC Philharmonic for this performance.

Inside Classical: Series 1

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