Few song cycles have quite so much adoration bestowed upon them as Richard Strauss鈥檚 'Four Last Songs' and it鈥檚 easy to see why. Written at the end of his life, their bittersweet rapture has the power to move audiences to tears as Strauss weds poems of nostalgia and goodbye to his genius for opulent orchestral colour. Performed live, they鈥檙e an unforgettable experience and we鈥檙e delighted to have Elizabeth Llewellyn with us to sing them.

That misty mellowness is echoed in the glories of Vaughan Williams鈥檚 Fifth Symphony, a vision of peace and harmony written at the height of the Second World War. Its dedicatee was Jean Sibelius, whose enigmatic 'Tapiola' 鈥� a depiction of Finland鈥檚 mythic spirit of the forest 鈥� opens the concert.

This concerts ends at approximately 9:25pm.