The Lark Ascending Centenary – on demand

Online live broadcast

Venue:

Online
Time:

19:30
Date:

Tue 15 Dec 2020 - Fri 15 Jan 2021

A special online concert to celebrate 100 years since the first performance of one of the best-loved classical works of all time – Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending.

In the 100 years since its premiere, The Lark Ascending has been performed in every single one of the globe’s greatest concert halls, by the world’s finest orchestras and violinists. Now, The Lark returns home: on the centenary of its first performance, Bristol Beacon and Bristol Ensemble present a live broadcast from the very place it was first performed, Shirehampton Public Hall in Bristol.

In a recreation of the original occasion it will be performed just as it was on 15 December 1920, arranged for solo violin and piano, and realised by renowned violinist Jennifer Pike. Bristol Ensemble and Exultate Singers complete the evening with excerpts from the original programme.

Composed on the brink of World War I and premiered in its aftermath, The Lark Ascending was born into a world that would never be the same again. Based on the poem of the same name by George Meredith, it tells of a bird, soaring high above the English countryside, singing an impossibly beautiful song, unaffected by the turbulent earth below. Despite the context of its writing, this moving work speaks to a return to calm and hope for a better future – a sentiment as vital now as it was at the time it was written.

This will be an intimate performance beamed from this unique setting into the comfort of your own home. You are invited to join us to mark this moment in music history, but more than that, we implore you to just stop, listen, and be transported by the timeless song of The Lark Ascending.

Watch the concert broadcast

This concert is no longer available to watch.

The live broadcast was on Tue 15 Dec 2020, and was available to watch on-demand until 15 January 2021.

Programme

Jennifer Pike violin
Roger Huckle violin
Simon Kodurand violin
Helen Reid piano
Marcus Farnsworth baritone
David Ogden conductor
The Bristol Ensemble
Exultate Singers
Dr Jonathan James compere

Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Christmas Carols
Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending (arr. for violin and piano)
J S Bach Concerto for Two Violins in D minor BWV 1043
C Hubert H Parry Choral Song “Jerusalem”

Programme notes

Click below to download the PDF programme notes for this performance.

DOWNLOAD

Find out more

On Sunday 6 December journalist Andrew Green hosted an online In Conversation event with a number of guests including soloist Jennifer Pike. It is now available on demand.

WATCH HERE

On Sunday 13 December music educator Dr Jonathan James presented an in-depth guide to the Lark Ascending in an online talk recorded at King’s Weston House, Shirehampton. It is now available on demand.

WATCH HERE

Read more about The Lark’s Bristol roots and find out more about the original concert.

READ HERE

Follow #Lark100 on social media for the latest announcements.

Were you at this show?

We'd love to hear your memories of the performance. Add your photos, reviews and memories via Twitter using the hashtags: #bristolbeacon and #show276686 and they will appear on this page

Supported by

Supported using National Lottery funding by Arts Council England
The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust
Paragon Music Trust
Bristol Ensemble

PreviousNext

Jennifer Pike

Renowned for her “dazzling interpretative flair and exemplary technique” (Classic FM), British violinist Jennifer Pike has taken the musical world by storm with her unique artistry and compelling insight into music from the Baroque to the present day. In demand as soloist and recitalist all over the world, she is known as an artist of exceptional integrity and depth, whilst her ability to “hold an audience spellbound” (The Strad) and “luminous beauty of tone” (The Observer) have established her as one of the most exciting artists performing today.

She first gained international recognition in 2002, when, aged 12, she became the youngest-ever winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the youngest major prizewinner in the Menuhin International Violin Competition. Aged 15 she made acclaimed débuts at the BBC Proms and Wigmore Hall, and her many subsequent Proms appearances have included the role of 2009 “featured artist”. She was invited to become a BBC New Generation Artist (2008-10), she won the inaugural International London Music Masters Award and became the only classical artist ever to win the South Bank Show/Times Breakthrough Award. Passionate about helping young people from all backgrounds enhance their lives through music, she was recently invited to become an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust and Foundation for Children and the Arts, and patron of the Lord Mayor’s City Music Foundation.

In 2015 and 2016 Pike toured to Mexico with the London Philharmonic, performed in the Sibelius Festival 150th year celebrations, gave a special performance to an audience of 11,000 at the Atlas Area in Poland as part of the ‘Night of the Proms’ tour broadcast on Polish TV as well as many notable performances with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra to name a few.

In 2017 she curated an unprecedented event at the Wigmore Hall with three concerts in one day celebrating Polish music, in which she gave the UK premiere of Penderecki’s Capriccio for solo violin and a specially commissioned new work by Paulina Zalubska. An enthusiastic promoter of new music, she has had many works written for her, including Hafliði Hallgrímsson’s Violin Concerto, which she premièred with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Bray’s Scenes from Wonderland which she premièred with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall and Andrew Schultz’s Violin Concerto and Sonatina for solo violin, for which her recording was nominated for ‘Best Performance of an Australian Composition’ at the Australian Classical Music Awards.

Bristol Ensemble

Bristol Ensemble is a professional chamber orchestra, formed in 1994 by violinist Roger Huckle (originally called the Emerald Ensemble). They’re best known for their work with film and media, and their contemporary music project – Elektrostatic.

Bristol Ensemble also carries out various community outreach programmes in schools, colleges and for the elderly. They’ve recorded for TV and film, notably the BBC Natural History Unit. Bristol Ensemble is in residence at University of Bristol.

Exultate Singers

Exultate Singers was founded in 2002 and has gone on to give over 150 concerts, broadcasts and other appearances in the UK, Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy and the Czech Republic. The choir has performed on BBC One’s Songs of Praise and The One Show, on Classic FM and on BBC Radio in broadcasts on Radios 2, 3 and 4 and the World Service.

In 2012 Exultate Singers was selected by the BBC to represent the UK in the semi-finals of the European choral competition, Let The Peoples Sing. The choir has commissioned music from Roxanna Panufnik, Philip Moore, Ian Carpenter, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi and James MacMillan.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.

Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–1908 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music and free it from Teutonic influences.

Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.

Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams’s personal life. The First World War, in which he served in the army, had a lasting emotional effect. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much younger woman, who later became his second wife. He went on composing through his seventies and eighties, producing his last symphony months before his death at the age of eighty-five. His works have continued to be a staple of the British concert repertoire, and all his major compositions and many of the minor ones have been recorded.

[Wikipedia 18 November 2020]

David Ogden

David Ogden is a professional conductor and composer. He conducts Exultate Singers, City of Bristol Choir, the Royal Mail Choir and in his post of Head of the Bristol Choral Centre, he conducts the Bristol Schools Chamber Choirs. He is Director of Music at Holy Trinity Church, Westbury-on-Trym in Bristol. For over 25 years he has worked with numerous professional and amateur groups of all shapes and sizes in many fields of music making, including church music, concerts, musical theatre and opera, community projects, primary and secondary level educational workshops, from small children’s groups to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

In his work with the BBC he has conducted choirs on BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and the World Service, and worked as conductor, arranger and music adviser on BBC TV’s Songs of Praise. He is religious music adviser for the BBC’s hit series Call The Midwife, and worked with the Royal Mail Choir in the BBC Two series The Choir: Sing While You Work. His compositions are published by the RSCM and White Light Publishing, and are performed in schools and churches worldwide.

Jonathan James

Jonathan James is a freelance music educator and conductor who is well known to Bristol audiences through his regular pre-concert talks and lecture series here in Colston Hall and St George’s. He is in high demand as a speaker in concert venues across the UK and works with orchestras (e.g. BSO, RPO, BBC NOW) to deliver a variety of educational workshops and presentations. He has a passion for explaining how music works and directs the Bristol Pre-Conservatoire, an evening school for talented classical and jazz musicians.

The Lark Ascending Centenary – on demand

Online live broadcast

Venue:

Time:

Date: