Prom 41 – Edward Gardner conducts Elgar & Vaughan Williams

Part of the BBC Proms.

War casts its long shadow over this Prom given by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus – part of this season’s musical survey suggested by the centenary of the end of the First World War. A precursor to Britten’s War Requiem (see Prom 72), Vaughan Williams’s cantata Dona nobis pacem is a heartbreakingly beautiful exploration of the violence of war, its expansive lyricism a natural foil for the compressed drama of Lili Boulanger’s choral miniature Pour les fun?railles d’un soldat. Elgar’s much-loved Cello Concerto, composed in the wake of the conflict, completes this emotive concert, with French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras as soloist.