Winter Festival 2 - A Terrible Beauty – English String Music, from 1900 to 1939

Rachael Montesino Young (conductor)
Dame Harriet Walter
Toby Jones
George Hlawiczka (leader)
London Virtuosi Ensemble

A Terrible Beauty explores the extraordinary flowering of English string music in the first decades of the twentieth century — music of radiant lyricism and haunting emotional depth, written in the shadow of a rapidly changing world. Performed by the newly formed LoVE (London Virtuosi Ensemble) under the direction of Rachael Montésino Young, who has regularly assisted world-renowned conductor Paavo Järvi in concerts and recordings and has conducted across Europe, South America and Australasia, this programme brings together some of the most evocative and beloved works in the English string repertoire, interwoven with moving readings by two distinguished actors, Harriet Walter and Toby Jones.

At its heart lies a profound sense of beauty touched by fragility. Composed between the final years of the Edwardian era and the uncertain decades between two world wars, these works reflect a society poised between nostalgia and modernity, serenity and upheaval. The soaring lines of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis seem to suspend time itself, while the aching tenderness of Finzi’s Romance and Elgar’s Elegy speaks of loss, remembrance and longing. Frank Bridge’s elegant Valse–Intermezzo captures the glittering surface of a vanished world, and Michael Tippett’s exhilarating Concerto for Double String Orchestra bursts forth with rhythmic vitality, yet beneath its energy lies an undercurrent of tension and unease.

Complementing the music, a series of evocative readings by poets and authors including Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Vera Brittain, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Joseph Conrad, Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Woolf will illuminate the hopes, fears and profound human experiences of the period. Delivered by Harriet Walter and Toby Jones, these literary interludes bring an additional dimension to an evening shaped by the beauty, turbulence and emotional intensity of the age.

From the sweeping grandeur of Elgar’s Introduction & Allegro to the luminous spirituality of Vaughan Williams, this is music and literature of extraordinary richness and emotional power — at once intimate and expansive, deeply English yet universal in its humanity.

A compelling and atmospheric evening of music and words, A Terrible Beauty invites audiences into a world of warmth, passion and poignancy.

This concert is promoted in association with Pivot Media Venture Partners LLP.

Full Programme
Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Introduction & Allegro
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): Romance
Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Elegy
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis
Frank Bridge (1879-1941): Valse - Intermezzo
Michael Tippett (1905-1998): Concerto for double string orchestra