Echoes of the Isles
Saturday 21 June, 7.30pm
The Hebrides - Felix Mendelssohn
A Shropshire Lad - George Butterworth
Tintagel - Arnold Bax
-- INTERVAL --
Symphony no. 3 ("Pastoral") - Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ben Crick – Conductor
The Hebrides
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
On 8th August 1829, during a trip to the British Isles, Felix Mendelssohn sailed from Tobermory on the Isle of Mull to Iona, stopping at the smaller island of Staffa along the way. The journey would eventually inspire a concert overture, first titled To the Lonely Island and later renamed The Hebrides in 1833. A later publication added the now-familiar alternative title Fingal’s Cave.
Mendelssohn’s travelling companion Karl Klingemann wrote two days later from Glasgow, describing their visit:
“We were put out in boats and lifted by the hissing sea up the pillar stumps to the celebrated Fingal’s Cave. A greener roar of waves surely never rushed into a stranger cavern – its many pillars making it look like the inside of an immense organ, black and resounding, and absolutely without purpose, and quite alone, the wide grey sea within and without.”
The cave’s ‘resounding’ vastness, the choppy ‘hissing’ sea (which left Mendelssohn and others seasick), and the ‘wide grey sea’ are all vividly suggested in the overture’s soundscape. It opens with a gently rocking motif that rises from the depths beneath still, held notes in the upper strings, growing more agitated as shimmering semiquavers give way to stormy chromaticism. A second idea - a hymn-like melody beginning in the cellos - perhaps evokes the ‘immense organ’ of the cave.
This theme is both reflective and surging, giving rise to a sense of stormy grandeur. Serenity and turbulence interplay throughout the rest of the piece, with the dramatic and contemplative in equal balance. Later, the clarinets quietly recall the hymn motif like a distant memory, before the waves return with one last swelling climax. Yet there is no triumphant ending in the final moments, only a quiet repeated pizzicato chord, as though we have returned ashore dizzied but awestruck.
It is these vivid musical depictions that have led many to consider this piece an early tone poem. Despite its intricate musical craftsmanship, this overture’s effect is strikingly pictorial. There may be no surviving sketch of Staffa in Mendelssohn’s notebook, but in the music the island is vividly drawn.
Notes by Benjamin Jackson
A Shropshire Lad: Rhapsody for Orchestra
George Butterworth (1885-1916)
George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad Rhapsody is a work suffused with a gentle, aching beauty — a musical reflection on youth, mortality, and the English countryside. Composed in 1911–12 and premiered shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, it draws its inspiration from A.E. Housman’s famous cycle of poems of the same name. Housman’s verses, with their wistful evocations of lost youth and rural life shadowed by death, resonated deeply with Butterworth and many of his contemporaries.
Butterworth originally set eleven of the Shropshire Lad poems for voice and piano, but the orchestral rhapsody is a purely instrumental meditation — not a literal depiction of any specific poem, but a response to the collection’s overall mood and themes. The music unfolds slowly and without haste, as if wandering through a landscape of memory. A long, arching main theme emerges early, quiet and restrained, passed between strings and woodwinds with an air of wistful reflection.
There are no dramatic climaxes or sharp contrasts here. Instead, the piece moves with a kind of pastoral inevitability, its harmonies coloured by English folksong and its textures often delicate and spare. It ends as it begins: quietly, fading into silence, as if retreating into the past.
Tragically, Butterworth was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, at the age of just 31. Much of his music was lost or destroyed, but this rhapsody survives as a poignant reminder of a promising voice silenced by war. It is both an elegy and a tribute — to youthful potential, to the vanished countryside of pre-war England, and to the many lives, like Butterworth’s, that were cut short.
Tintagel
Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953)
Sir Arnold Bax was an English 'Romantic' composer active in the first half of the 20th Century. Considered the leading English Symphonic composer during the interwar years, he was largely forgotten after his death in 1953 as his music was considered by many to be old fashioned. The exception to this was the Symphonic Poem Tintagel which was often recorded by major orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra.
Bax led a colourful life enjoying the company of various mistresses and muses and it was during his days studying at the Royal Academy of Music that he developed a keen interest in Irish and Celtic, and later in life, Nordic cultures.
Whilst you can hear and feel the influence of other earlier composers in his work, Bax avoided going in the same direction as Wagner and Strauss to concentrate on this Celtic theme, safe in the knowledge that due to his private income he didn't have to pander to current trends.
During the summer of 1917 (Bax suffered a lifelong heart condition meaning he couldn't serve in the First World War, but he did serve for a time as a special constable). Bax spent 6 weeks in Cornwall with his then mistress, the pianist Harriet Cohen, visiting Tintagel during that time. Of course his interest in Celtic Culture meant he was very quick to feel the history and mystique surrounding the castle connected to King Arthur (supposedly where he was conceived) and he composed and orchestrated the new piece between then and January 1919. The work is dedicated to Cohen.
Tintagel is a shortish symphonic tone poem that is descriptive but as Bax himself pointed out ‘is programme music in only the broadest sense.' It describes first a serene and peaceful sea with the ruined castle standing majestically on the clifftop, then on to give his impression of the Kings Arthur and Mark, followed by passages representing the crashing waves on the rocks, the sea in all its majesty, and then the final passage demonstrating the enduring nature of Tintagel standing firm and proud despite the onslaught of nature.
Notes by Andrew Knowles
Symphony no. 3 in C - "Pastoral"
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Soprano: Emma Rae Ward
1. Molto moderato
2. Lento moderato - Moderato maestoso
3. Moderato pesante
4. Lento
At first glance, Vaughan Williams’ Pastoral Symphony might seem to evoke the gentle beauty of the English countryside — and in many ways, it does. Broad, flowing melodies and soft orchestral textures conjure images of rolling hills, distant skylarks, and evening light over quiet fields. But this is no idyllic celebration. Beneath the surface lies a far more complex and haunting reality: the work is deeply shaped by Vaughan Williams’ experiences in the First World War.
Composed in the years following the Armistice, the Pastoral Symphony was born not in a green and pleasant land, but amid the mud and devastation of the Western Front. Vaughan Williams served as a stretcher bearer and artillery officer in France, and he later described the Pastoral as “almost entirely war-time music.” The landscapes it evokes are not those of unspoiled peace, but of memory and aftermath — fields that have seen horror, skies that have hung heavy with smoke, and silences that linger too long.
The music moves slowly and deliberately, as if in a dream. The first movement opens with a quiet horn call and unfolds in broad, lyrical phrases that rise and fall like waves — serene on the surface, but tinged with melancholy. The second movement introduces a solo trumpet playing in the style of a natural bugle, its distant, flattened tone suggesting both military ritual and personal lament. Around it, modal harmonies and gentle dissonances paint a hazy, unsettled atmosphere. The third movement, labelled moderato pesante, is a sort of ghostly scherzo: its rhythms are steady and grounded, but the mood is one of restrained intensity. Fleeting hints of folk-like melody and dance are quickly shadowed by darker undercurrents, as if joy is remembered rather than lived. Across all three movements, Vaughan Williams avoids conventional symphonic drama or climax, favouring instead a steady introspection that draws the listener into a deeply personal sound world.
The final movement is perhaps the most haunting of all. A wordless soprano floats above the orchestra, like a distant echo or an unanswerable question. It’s a lament, not only for lives lost, but for a world changed irrevocably. And yet, the natural world — or a memory of it — remains a guiding presence. The landscape is still here, altered and shadowed, but enduring.
Vaughan Williams offers no easy resolution. Instead, the Pastoral Symphony ends as it began: quietly, contemplatively, with a sense of unresolved grief and lingering beauty. It is a meditation not on war’s fury, but on its aftermath — and on the fragile persistence of nature and humanity in its wake
Ben Crick
Conductor
Ben is a Yorkshire born and based orchestral conductor and composer with 20 years’ experience working in the music industry. He loves collaboration with other art forms, be it ballet, films or computer games, and is inspired by a firm belief that music can tell stories as eloquently as any art that humankind has created.
He’s held a BBC Music Fellowship and has worked with orchestras throughout the UK and Europe, conducting such performers as Lesley Garrett, Tasmin Little, Jennifer Pike, Sir Willard White, Peter Donahoe, Raphael Wallfisch, Aled Jones and Dame Emma Kirkby. He’s into getting as many people as possible to see his work and engage with the music so as Artistic Director of Skipton Camerata he’s put on performances in pubs, shopping centres and train stations as well as more traditional venues.
As a composer his work aims to tell the story of the north of England; its geography, people and history. Projects in 2024 included a 50 minute orchestral tone poem called Soundscapes that accompanied an immersive projection about the Yorkshire Dales and an opera titled A Luddite’s Prophesy, a work that contrasts the Luddite uprisings in Huddersfield during 1812 with how today’s society may work to introduce emergent AI technologies. In 2025 he composed the orchestral score for the opening ceremony of Bradford City of Culture 2025 whilst his most recent work is a collaboration with the poet Ian McMillan. Ian wrote 20 poems about significant Yorkshire figures through history which Ben then set to music in a work called A Northern Score, this work will open Bradford Live, a new 3000 seat venue, on August 1st. His next major work is a collaboration with Outreach Opera on a work about the Pendle Witches.
With a passionate belief in music education for all, he is the consultant conductor of York Youth Orchestra and a trustee of ‘The Friends of Bradford Music Services’, a charity committed to making music lessons accessible to as many people as possible in the Bradford district. He is the conducting tutor at the University of Huddersfield and University of Leeds, a staff conductor at the Leeds Conservatoire, has written for BBC Music Magazine, Opera Now and Early Music Today, translated 3 operas and has been a guest contributor for BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4.
Emma Rae Ward
Soprano
Emma is a classically trained singer based between Nottingham and Sheffield. She began her vocal training at the age of 9, earning a place in the world renowned Cantamus Girls Choir, where she became a soloist and studied under Pamela Cook MBA. At the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Emma continued her training earning a BMus(Hons), and completed her MSc studies at the Royal College of Music in 2021. Emma currently teaches the girl choristers at Southwell Minster, is a music educator and choral conductor for Sheffield Music Hub, and studies singing with Rachel
Nicholls and Bradley Smith. Alongside this, she has a continued interest in Vocal Health practices and in her spare time can be found hiking in the Peak District.
Hallam Sinfonia
Violin 1
Hannah Thompson-Smith, Katy Silverman, John Cooper, Liz Stephenson, Anton Nikolaev, Richard Gilbert, Richard Allen
Violin 2
Kate Fehler, Catherine Pugh, Mary Dougherty, Helena Vassiliadis, Rachael Evans, Catherine Bowman, Lasse Rempe
Viola
Charlotte Kenyon, Helen Mather, Kiri Smith, Jo Powis, David Mllsom
Cello
Jeremy Dawson, Dominic Smith, Nat Blakesley, Benjamin Jackson, Joy Paul, Sue Dumpleton, Amy Gould, Rosanna Keefe
Bass
John Goepel, Wendy Willis
Flute/Piccolo
Judith Ennis, Kathryn Hathaway, Tony Jones
Oboe/Cor Anglais
Vicky Holmes, Helen Jenkinson, Carolyn Bean
Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Karen Burland, Cath Murray, Becky Stroud
Bassoon/Contrabassoon
Dawn Allenby, Rosie Hodgson
Horn
Bob Ashworth, Jo Towler, Frank Edenborough, Gill Hillier
Trumpet
Matthew Redfearn, George Breakwell, Alex Shields
Trombone
Andrew Knowles, Nick Hart, Richard Dixon
Tuba
Colin Sydney
Percussion
Mick Godber, Tommy Roberts, Gareth Widdowson
Harp
Alley York