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.
