Elgar’s Cello Concerto

Composed during the blitz and premiered at the 1943 Proms, Vaughan Williams’ serene Fifth Symphony seems like a retreat from the real world to an imagined paradise. Elgar’s equally lyrical Cello Concerto, composed in 1919, also feels like a reaction against the horrors of wartime. Vernon Handley, such a tireless champion of English music, precedes these two masterpieces with a musical fairytale by Granville Bantock, who did so much for Birmingham’s musical life and was instrumental in the founding of the CBSO in 1920.

6.15pm Pre-concert talk – Vaughan Williams’ Fifth
Baz Chapman – Programme Director of Sing Up – shares his enthusiasm for Vaughan Williams’ great wartime symphony.

We are pleased to announce that Martyn Brabbins will now conduct the concerts on 4 and 5 November 2008. The programme remains the same. The concerts are dedicated to the memory of Vernon Handley who died on 10 September 2008, aged 77 and was due to have conducted the CBSO on these occasions.

£9.50, £13.50, £17, £20.50, £23.50, £28, £32, £37, £39.50

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