Vaughan Williams Anniversary Concert, Dome Concert Hall, Brighton, May 11

1:38pm Monday 12th May 2008

In his lifetime, Ralph Vaughan Williams's folk-inflected oeuvre was damned as "cowpat music". Now, on the 50th anniversary of his death, he is firmly established as England's favourite composer, thanks to the endearing prettiness of works such as The Lark Ascending.

For all that, Vaughan Williams has a dark side - he lived through two world wars - and so it was that Richard Hickox and his City of London Sinfonia presented a tribute that went from light to utter blackness.

After The Wasps overture, a sprightly Edwardian romp, baritone Gerald Finley performed Songs Of Travel with a sense of open-hearted naivety that these poems about love and the open road in a time before Kerouac require.

The mood became darker when the Brighton Festival Chorus joined the orchestra for a high-voltage rendering of Towards The Unknown Region.

But in the second half, the one-act opera based on JM Synge's Irish tragedy Riders To The Sea, Catherine Wyn-Rogers banished pretty thoughts as she movingly portrayed a mother whose only surviving son is drowned.

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