Friday 27 January 2017

The Edvard Grieg Choir participates in collaboration with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in the performance of Vaughan Williams' seventh symphony. The evening's all-British program begins with Benjamin Britten's four beautiful sea interludes taken from the opera about the fisherman Peter Grimes. The rest of the concert is dedicated to Britten's countryman, Ralph Vaughan Williams. His Four last songs were composed towards the end of his life, in the years between 1954 and 1958, and are based on four poems written by his wife Ursula.

Vaughan Williams' Seventh Symphony began life as music for the 1947 film Scott of the Antarctic , which dealt with Captain Robert Scott's last and tragic expedition to the South Pole in 1912, where he had to see himself beaten by Roald Amundsen.

Vaughan Williams was inspired and moved by the expedition participants' stoic courage, strength and effort, while at the same time shocked by their incompetence. Sir Andrew Davis is president of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society and will also lead the recording of the work with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.

Between movements of the symphony, baritone soloist Roderick Williams reads texts by Shelley, Coleridge and Donne, from the Bible and from Scott's diary.