Festival Photos 2015 - SCS/SSO Concert - Fauré and Vaughan Williams

Dona Nobis Pacem was written and first performed in 1936. He wrote this piece as a plea for peace by referring to recent wars during the growing fears of a new one (39-45). The texts came from some poems by Walt Whitman, sections of the Bible, the Catholic Mass and a political speech from John Bright where he tried to stop the Crimean War.
(Information courtesy of Wikipedia)

Internationally acclaimed cellist Guy Johnston performs the beautiful Élégie by Gabriel Fauré, and as a special celebration of 40 years of classical music at the Gordon Craig Theatre, Stevenage Choral Society and Stevenage Symphony Orchestra came together to perform the profoundly moving and inspiring Dona Nobis Pacem by the great 20th century English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The orchestra played more of Vaughan Williams’s music with the English Folk Song Suite. This piece was originally written for a Military Band (Folk Song Suite was originally published in 1923) but arranged for Orchestra by RVW's student of the time - Gordon Jacob - the orchestral version of the piece was renamed to the English Folk Song Suite when published in 1924.

Odd fact: The English Folk Song Suite originally had a fourth movement, Sea Songs, (originally played as the second movement) which RVW had removed from this piece, re-orchestrated himself and published as a separate work. For this performance the Sea Songs work was performed in its original position in the suite.

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