Bax | Walton | Vaughan Williams at The Bridgewater Hall
Will Fulford-Jones
Bax – November Woods (19’)
Walton – Violin Concerto (30’)
Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 4 (31’)
While the opening concert in the BBC Philharmonic’s 2018-19 season is rooted in Italy, this evening stays rather closer to home – three works by English composers, under the baton of one of this country’s most popular conductors. William Walton wrote three string concertos, and this concert sees the orchestra complete the set: following Truls Mørk’s account of the Cello Concerto (22 September) and Lawrence Power’s performance of the Viola Concerto (16 November), James Ehnes tackles the iconic Violin Concerto as the centrepiece of this evening’s programme. It’s preceded by Arnold Bax’s November Woods, a deeply personal evocation of autumn presented in the thick of the English spring, and followed by Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony, dedicated to Bax and described by none other than Walton as ‘the greatest symphony since Beethoven’. High praise, but guest conductor John Wilson will try to convince us he was right.
James Ehnes – violin
John Wilson – conductor
