The English music festival’s annual burrowings into the hinterland of early 20th-century British music continues to turn up pieces that have been neglected or ignored. The opening concert of this year’s programme, given by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates, consisted entirely of such works, even though it was bookended by Elgar and Vaughan Williams.
The performance of Elgar’s comic overture The Spanish Lady was described as a world premiere, which seemed odd, given that Yates has already recorded a suite assembled from the opera that Elgar worked on in the last years of his life, which began with this overture. It’s certainly not top-drawer Elgar, but attractive enough in a rumbustious way, with occasional echoes of his Falstaff and overture In the South, though the Dorchester Abbey acoustic did give it a brassy glaze. The Vaughan Williams that ended the concert was Old King Cole, composed in 1923 for a Cambridge festival, and more or less what might be expected from a work described as a “folk ballet” – a succession of solemn processions, jigs and fiddle dances, with a wordless chorus (members of the Thame Chamber and City of Oxford Choirs) and a final hint of the world of The Lark Ascending.
