Duncan Riddell directs British Works

Handel’s Water Music accompanied George I along a royal excursion down the River Thames in 1717 and the suites have become firmly engrained within British culture ever since. Later during the eighteenth century, Haydn enjoyed a lucrative spell in the nation’s capital – particularly with his twelve ‘London’ symphonies, the last of which adopted this nickname. The English Musical Renaissance of the late-nineteenth to twentieth centuries saw the reforming of a national artistic presence through music. Few composers have evoked the English countryside more distinctly than Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending being one of his most idyllic portrayals of pastoral themes.