Prom 39 – Mark-Anthony Turnage, Vaughan Williams and Elgar

Part of the BBC Proms.

A concert of English music continues this season’s strand of concertos for instruments often shunned from the limelight. International prize-winner Constantin Hartwig is the soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto – the first of its kind for the instrument, a work with a twinkle in its eye that catches the tuba’s bluff, Falstaffian bluster. Many years in the making, Elgar’s First Symphony is an optimistic work, bursting with melody and emotion, expressing ‘a massive hope in the future’. It’s a mood shared with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s celebratory Time Flies, inspired by the feats of the Olympics.