From Darkness to Light: Britten, Strauss, and Vaughan Williams

Britten Les Illuminations
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
Strauss Metamorphosen

Elizabeth Watts director/soprano
Bristol Ensemble

The internationally-acclaimed soprano, Elizabeth Watts, directs the Bristol Ensemble in this powerful exploration of human suffering and transcendence.

Britten’s Les Illuminations, based on nine poems by Arthur Rimbaud, forms the centrepiece of the concert, performed here in the version for soprano. Vaughan Williams’ iconic Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, scored for string quartet and two string orchestras, is one of the best loved works of English string music.

Richard Strauss’s powerful and evocative elegy for 23 solo strings, Metamorphosen, ends this program of music exploring darkness, light, and human suffering. Composed just after the second world war, in response to the bombing of German cultural and artistic centres, its poignant closing bars reference the funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony in a defiant gesture signifying the power of art over warfare.