English music with the Berliner Philharmoniker
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Edward Elgar
Symphony No. 2 in E flat major, op. 63 (54 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko
Benjamin Britten
The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, op. 34 (19 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle
Henry Purcell
Suite from The Fairy Queen (27 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Emmanuelle Haïm
Benjamin Britten
Peter Grimes, op. 33: Passacaglia (9 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Andris Nelsons
William Walton
Symphony No. 1 in B flat Minor (53 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Semyon Bychkov
Thomas Adès
Three Studies from Couperin (15 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Alan Gilbert
Edward Elgar
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in B minor, op. 61 (53 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Zubin Mehta
Pinchas Zukerman Violin
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (18 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle
Thomas Tallis
“Spem in alium”, 40-part motet (9 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle
Rundfunkchor Berlin, Simon Halsey Chorus Master
Benjamin Britten
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, op. 15 (36 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Daniel Harding
Janine Jansen Violin
Sir George Benjamin
Palimpsests for orchestra (23 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir George Benjamin
Edward Elgar
The Dream of Gerontius, op. 63 (101 min.)Berliner Philharmoniker
Daniel Barenboim
Anna Larsson Mezzo-Soprano, Ian Storey Tenor, Kwangchoul Youn Bass, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Simon Halsey Chorus Master
The importance of English music in the Renaissance and Baroque periods cannot be denied, nor can its central role in modern and contemporary music. The most successful composers of contemporary music include a strikingly large number of artists from England, such as Rebecca Saunders, George Benjamin or Thomas Adès. And England has no competition to fear in the history of popular music either.
The polemical reference to the “land without music” refers to the 18th and 19th centuries, to a period during which very great English names were in fact absent. To this day, no convincing explanation has been found for this phenomenon, especially since England had both a thriving music scene in this era and such a knowledgeable and passionate audience. Major successes were enjoyed there by Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn, whose Elijah was first performed in English in Birmingham.
The lack of direct role models finally became a challenge for Benjamin Britten, who did not think much of the musical Romanticism of his home country. In the development of his tonal language, he turned rather on the one hand to central continental European composers and on the other hand to English Baroque music. His work The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, for example, is based on a theme by Henry Purcell. Ralph Vaughan Williams also refers to Early Music in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Sir Simon Rattle was the first chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker from the United Kingdom. In addition to key works by Purcell, Britten and Edward Elgar, he also conducted world premieres of works by English composers during his tenure. And as a prelude to Mahler’s monumental Eighth Symphony, he presented “Spem in alium”, a masterpiece of early vocal polyphony by Thomas Tallis.
Although Edward Elgar did not publish his most important works until the 20th century, he remained stylistically a contemporary of Romanticism. In 2012, the Philharmoniker’s chief conductor Kirill Petrenko made a passionate case for Elgar’s Second Symphony, which had not been performed by the orchestra for 37 years. Other major works by the composer in this selection are his Violin Concerto and the haunting oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, in which Elgar continued the tradition of English choral music.