SCO 25/26: The Language of Eden

From poignant pastoral visions to stirring choral majesty: SCO Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Manze conducts an evening of rapturous English music and striking new sounds, in the company of exceptional British baritone and composer Roderick Williams and the fine voices of the SCO Chorus.

Williams sings in his own orchestral arrangements of Butterworth’s bittersweet A Shropshire Lad, in which nostalgia for the English countryside mingles heartbreakingly with premonitions of coming war.  

Vaughan Williams, meanwhile, summons visionary wonder to celebrate the power of music itself in his radiant Serenade while the young Elgar unleashes passion and lyricism in his playful Serenade for Strings.

After Haydn’s startling ‘Representation of Chaos’, Roderick Williams is also the soloist in a brand-new choral work by SCO Associate Composer Jay Capperauld, with libretto by Niall Campbell, that reimagines the birth of language itself, The Language of Eden. 

Artists

Andrew Manze conductor 
Roderick Williams baritone 
SCO Chorus 
Gregory Batsleer chorus director 

Programme

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Serenade to Music 
ELGAR Serenade 
BUTTERWORTH arr WILLIAMS Six Songs from 'A Shropshire Lad' 
HAYDN ‘The Representation of Chaos’ from The Creation 
CAPPERAULD The Language of Eden (World Premiere) 

Presented by The Scottish Chamber Orchestra