Orchestral Favourites: CD

One of the leading English composers of his generation, Vaughan Williams' work went some way towards creating a specifically English musical idiom. He was highly influenced by folk-song, as represented here most clearly in both the Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1and in the Fantasia on Greensleves. These are far more than just direct quotations of familiar tunes, however, and are coloured by his own inimitable personal vision and language, establishing them along with the other works on this disc as perennial orchestral favourites of the twentieth century.