BBC Philharmonic 2016-17 Season Music to mark St George's Day

On St George’s Day, our attention turns to the composer whose music evokes England better than any other. But while Ralph Vaughan Williams’s gorgeous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis positively sings of the English countryside, the inspiration for his elegiac A Pastoral Symphony was not our green and pleasant land but the French battlefields of the First World War. Completing the bill, violinist Vadim Gluzman delivers a rare performance of Sofia Gubaidulina’s searingly beautiful violin concerto – once heard, never forgotten.