This week I re-listened to the podcast of last year's "Your Desert Island Discs". The most requested piece of music amongst listeners was Ralph Vaughan Williams "The Lark Ascending" - with its beautiful soaring melody. It's no wonder it's a popular choice - and not just with Radio 4 listeners, but also amongst Classic FM fans - it was Number 2 in last year's Hall of Fame.
Here's the fabulous Nicola Benedetti performing it:
Andrew
1 comment:
I have an old vinyl LP somewhere, bought in the 1960s, featuring excerpts from the Top 10 listener-voted favourites from Alan Keith's Radio 2 programme, 'Your Hundred Best Tunes', which ran until the 1990s. This particularly lovely V.W. piece didn't appear at all then. (The top choice for year after year around this time was Beethoven's 'Pastoral'.)
Although I do love the 'Lark', and without wishing to detract from it, if I did have to choose one piece to remind me of Emgland, it would have to be the same composer's 'Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis'. Nothing tugs so heartaching poingnantly at my 50% English side like that work.
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