Welcome to the opening concert of the season. We open with George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad Rhapsody, inspired by A. E. Housman’s poetry collection of the same name. Drawing upon themes from Butterworth’s own songs, particularly Loveliest of Trees, the work is pastoral, elegiac, and deeply poignant. Written before the First World War, it later became inseparably associated with the tragedy of that conflict following Butterworth’s death on the Somme at just 31 years of age.

Gerald Finzi’s The Fall of the Leaf (Elegy), Op. 20, continues the programme’s atmosphere of reflection and lyricism. Evoking the beauty of the English countryside, the work combines warmth and serenity with quiet melancholy. Left incomplete at Finzi’s death and later completed by Howard Ferguson, it remains one of his most intimate and heartfelt orchestral works.

We are proud to present the world première of Ascension, a Concerto for Flute and Orchestra by David C. Heath. Performed by internationally renowned flautist Wissam Boustany, the work promises a compelling new voice within the concerto repertoire, bringing together virtuosity, lyricism, and contemporary orchestral colour.

The concert concludes with Florence Price’s groundbreaking Symphony No. 3, a work combining African American musical traditions with bold twentieth-century orchestral writing. Moving between lyricism, dance rhythms, blues influences, and striking orchestral drama, the symphony stands today as one of the great achievements of American symphonic music.

Shaun Matthew

Sponsored by Lady Ayckbourn