Lesley Garrett

Tonight's show was recorded at the Snape Proms in the stunning Snape Maltings Concert Hall.

Ken Bruce introduces the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Richard Balcombe with special guest Lesley Garrett.

"I think I have found a good spot to live in - it is an old mill house in a quaint old village called Snape" so wrote Benjamin Britten in 1937.
The composer was to spend most of his life in this idyllic corner of the British Isles. Inspired by the Suffolk sea, sky and countryside he wrote some of his greatest works here including Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Albert Herring and A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Tonight, the BBC Concert Orchestra returns to the Snape Maltings Concert Hall - Britten's dream venue for his Aldeburgh Festival converted from an old malting house beside the sleepy River Alde.

Tonight's music selection is equally inspired by sea, sky and the countryside both at home and abroad. Lesley has chosen two of the Songs from the Auvergne - French folk songs set to music by Joseph Canteloube as well as a selection English folk songs including All Around My Hat - a huge hit for Steeleye Span, whilst the orchestra perform the Lark In the Clear Air and Greenways by Gordon Langford - written about the abandoned railway lines of the countryside. In between our countryside rambles we visit take on a few city breaks - Oklahoma, Vienna, Rome and a cruise courtesy of the BBC Concert Orchestra - The Sea and Sinbad's Ship from Scheherazade by Rimsky Korsakov.

Making her Friday Night debut is the young trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary who performs medleys from West Side Story and An American Paris.

Recorded on 28th August at Snape Maltings. First broadcast in October last year.