BBC SO 2015-16 Season Sakari Oramo conducts Elgar Symphony No. 2

A yearning melancholy binds the music of Elgar and Butterworth, echoed in a beguiling new violin concerto from British composer Anna Clyne. George Butterworth, who died at the Somme in 1916, will forever be defined by his Housman settings, A Shropshire Lad, from which he derived this bittersweet orchestral rhapsody. ‘A passionate pilgrimage of the soul’ was how Elgar described his mighty, restless second symphony. Anna Clyne’s violin concerto, a co-commission with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was written for dymanic violinist Jennifer Koh. Sakari Oramo, a conductor with a strong affinity for English music, conducts.