An English Fantasia

Pre Concert Talk - 6:00pm The first half of the C20th witnessed something of a renaissance in the world of English music when composers such as Britten and Vaughan Williams found that looking to the past could yield creative inspiration when seeking a new path towards the future. Henry Purcell, in particular, offered a vital sense of continuity between the past and the English musical present and was something of a preoccupation for a coterie of young composers who were captivated by what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins described as his “divine genius”.