Cambridge Summer Music Festival

A Feast of Elgar and Vaughan Williams

Saturday 16 July, 7.30pm

Robinson College Chapel, Cambridge

(By kind permission of the Warden and Fellows of Robinson College)

Robert Murray tenor
Martin Roscoe piano
Benjamin Baker violin
Echéa Quartet
Adam Wynter double bass

Edward Elgar
Violin Sonata in E minor Op. 82

Ivor Gurney
Sleep from Five Elizabethan Songs
Far in a western brookland from Ludlow and Teme

Ralph Vaughan Williams
The Lark Ascending arr. Martin Gerigk for violin, string quartet & double bass

Ralph Vaughan Williams
On Wenlock Edge
Linden Lea
Silent Noon

Tickets: £26 plus booking fee. 8-25 years free

Two young stars, tenor Robert Murray and violinist Benjamin Baker, are joined by one of Britain’s most beloved pianists, Martin Roscoe, the Echéa Quartet and double-bassist Adam Wynter in a veritable feast of English turn-of-the-century classics.

Elgar composed his beautiful and introspective Violin Sonata towards the end of the First World War. It was first performed in 1919 – the same year in which English composer Ivor Gurney composed his setting of the wistfully reminiscent Far in a western brookland by A.E. Houseman. Sleep, which Gurney composed just before the war in 1913, is a setting of text by Elizabethan playwright John Fletcher.

Fifteen years Elgar’s junior, Vaughan Williams was born 150 years ago in 1872. We celebrate his 150th anniversary with two of his most loved compositions. The Lark Ascending, redolent of a dreamy English summer’s day, was inspired by the 1881 poem of the same name by the English writer George Meredith. Vaughan Williams composed the piece in 1914 but it was not until 1920 that it received its first performance. The song cycle On Wenlock Edge composed in 1909 takes six poems from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. Again we are transported to the peace of Edwardian Britain before global conflict changed the world for ever.

Generously supported by Hatty Harris, the Royal Over-Seas League and the Cavatina Trust