Main content

Vaughan Williams Today

Programmes, concerts and features celebrating Vaughan Williams's 150th anniversary.

Photo above courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust

Vaughan Williams Today continues ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3’s celebrations marking 150 years since Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth. Special programming throughout October explores the life and music of one of most cherished figures in British classical music.

Programmes include: Afternoon Concert throughout the week of the 150th anniversary, featuring the music by the composer, his friends and those who influenced him in recordings from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Orchestras and performers around Europe; a series of Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts live from the Oxford Lieder Festival, featuring some of the UK’s finest young singers in music by Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries; Drama on 3 People Everywhere Will Sing, focusing on the composer’s life after the death of first wife Adeline; Early Music Show with Hannah French exploring Vaughan Williams’s fascination with music of a bygone age; and The Essay – Vaughan Williams: Belonging, a five-part series where five writers not normally associated with classical music (Clare Shaw, Amanda Dalton, Rommi Smith, Adrian McNally, and Luke Turner) discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection. And in Sunday Feature: An Unconventional Teacher, music historian Leah Broad explores Ralph Vaughan Williams’s legacy as a teacher and champion of women composers.