William Walton: Overture, Portsmouth Point
Frederick Delius: On hearing the first cuckoo in spring
John Ireland: Piano Concerto
Interval
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis
Edward Elgar: Overture, In the South (Alassio)

A special afternoon of English music, framed around John Ireland's Piano Concerto, performed 50 years after his death.

Written in 1930, it was an immediate success at its première, its jazzy rhythms reminiscent of Ravel's G Major concerto. In this afternoon's concert it appears alongside works all written in the first three decades of the 20th century. These are Vaughan Williams's rhapsodic Tallis Fantasia, Elgar's evocative Alassio and Delius's glorious pastoral sound-painting describing the arrival of spring.

Walton's boisterous portrait of naval life, Portsmouth Point, completes the programme.

Performers

Philharmonia Orchestra
John Wilson conductor
Leon McCawley piano

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