Holst: 2 Songs without Words (dedicated to RVW), Holst: Fugal Concerto for Flute and Oboe, Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending, Wagner: Siegfried Idyll, Schubert: Symphony No. 5

Holst’s own music starts this centenary celebration of his first Whitsuntide Festival; what better than 2 Songs without Words, dedicated to his lifelong friend Ralph Vaughan Williams?

His Fugal Concerto is a little neoclassical gem, echoing his beloved Bach. In the last movement, reminding us how folk music inspired him, ‘If all the world were paper’ flashes briefly like a musical diamond. 

Alexandra Lomeiko, a postgraduate Lark Scholar at the Royal College of Music, will be the soloist in The Lark Ascending, one of RVW’s best known works.

Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll was written for his wife Cosima after the birth of Siegfried and this year is the bicentenary of Schubert’s 5th Symphony.

We welcome back Bob Porter and the Brandenburg Sinfonia, our resident orchestra. Their playing is always excellent; but we also appreciate their enthusiasm for our beautiful Church and their willingness to spread around the town and play informally in small groups (in their own time) before concerts start.

This is the spirit that Holst inspired in 1916 and it resonates with us a century later.