Expressive singing reveals the emotional depth of Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar. One of the most emotive singers working today, Ian Bostridge frequently performs music by Benjamin Britten, who wrote some of his most personal and heartfelt songs for the tenor voice. Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo are sung alongside Ralph Vaughan Williams’ elegiac On Wenlock Edge from 1909 which brings the poetry of AE Housman to life. Vaughan Williams wrote the cycle following lessons with the French composer Maurice Ravel. He remarked that his music thereafter had a French polish’, which can definitely be heard in this shimmering piece. Edward Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A Minor (1918) is a piece of great contrasts: melancholic and vigorous, sustained and fragmented. Composed at the end of World War I, and one of Elgar’s final works, it is a powerful and very human response to the horrors of the previous years. Supported by Susie Thomson Ian Bostridge Tenor Sir Antonio Pappano Piano Britten Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge Elgar Piano Quintet in A minor Sung in Italian and English with English surtitles