Proms 2025 Elder Conducts ‘A Mass of Life’

‘No other English composer offers more beauty in sound,’ Thomas Beecham said of Delius. There’s no more extravagant, impassioned or overwhelming a canvas for that beauty than A Mass of Life. Taking Nietzsche’s rapturous prose-poem Also sprach Zarathustra as a starting point, Delius imagined a secular Mass – a cantata for orchestra, chorus and soloists celebrating the transcendent power and triumph of the human spirit in the face of death. Sir Mark Elder conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with soloists including baritone Roderick Williams and tenor David Butt Philip.

There will be one interval

Roderick Williams © Theo Williams