British Music Society 40th Anniversary Concert | Ealing Symphony Orchestra

For 40 years the British Music Society has been at the forefront in the regeneration of interest in British composers whose music fell from fashion in the post-war era of Modernism. This concert features music by just a tiny fraction of British composers and concludes with Bax's dramatic and very moving First Symphony, a work written in response to the 1916 Easter Rising. The first half includes a rare performance of Hamilton Harty's romantic setting of Keats's great poem "Ode to a Nightingale" with the brilliant Australian soprano Helena Dix .

Ealing Symphony Orchestra has a formidable reputation for performing neglected masterpieces and became the first orchestra to perform the complete symphonies by Malcolm Arnold and recently embarked on the first cycle of George Lloyd's symphonies. Conductor John Gibbons is one of the foremost champions of British music with recordings on the Dutton, Toccata and Danacord labels.