New Music Britain

Tradition is about the present – and the future – as well as the past. Sir Simon Rattle opens the London Symphony Orchestra’s Autumn 2021 season with a concert that spans 100 years of British music.



British music has never conformed to easy stereotypes. In this opening concert of our new season, Judith Weir reads ancient Taoist poetry and finds ideas of radical simplicity. Peter Maxwell Davies attends an all-night party (and finds a bracing hangover cure) on his adopted home of Orkney. And because music never stands still, Sir Simon Rattle introduces the world premiere of two movements from a new choral work by Julian Anderson, inspired by the poetry of exile. Not what you might expect …



Program:

Purcell - Remember not, Lord, our offenses

Tippett - Praeludium

Julian Anderson - Two movements from ‘Exiles’ (world premiere) * †

Judith Weir - Natural History †

Vaughan Williams - A Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No 3) †

Maxwell Davies An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise ‡



Lucy Crowe soprano †

Robert Jordan bagpipes ‡

London Symphony Chorus

Simon Halsey chorus director