Details

Ludlow Assembly Rooms
Mill Street
Ludlow
Shropshire
SY8 1AZ
England

Sunday 13th April 2025
2:30 PM

Programme

Arthur Somervell – A Shropshire Lad: 'Loveliest of trees'
Ernest John Moeran – Far in a western brookland
Martin Bussey – Blue Remembered Hills: 'O when I was in love with you'
Ernest John Moeran – Say, lad, have you things to do?
Benjamin Burrows – Bredon Hill
Arnold Bax – When I was one and twenty
Rebecca Clarke – Eight o'clock
Benjamin Burrows – The Soldiers
Arthur Somervell – A Shropshire Lad: 'The street sounds to the soldiers tread'
Ernest John Moeran – Farewell to barn and stack and tree
George Butterworth – On the idle hill of Summer
John Ireland – The Land of Lost Content: The Encounter
Lennox Berkeley – 5 Housman Songs: 'He would not stay for me'
Arthur Somervell – A Shropshire Lad: White in the Moon the Long Road Lies
Alexander Papp – My Dear Withers (world premiere)
Hannah Lam – In Absence (world premiere)
John Ireland – We'll to the woods no more
Morfydd Owen – When I came last to Ludlow
George Butterworth – Is My Team Ploughing
George Butterworth – With rue my heart is laden
Arthur Somervell – A Shropshire Lad: 'Into my heart an air that kills'

Performers

Alex Jennings – Actor
Bethany Horak-Hallett – mezzo-soprano
Liam Bonthrone – tenor
Jolyon Loy – baritone

Other concerts in this Festival ▼

Programme Note

The closing recital of this year's Ludlow English Song Weekend, a three day celebration of art song in English in the beautiful town of Ludlow in the Shropshire Hills. Book for one of our concerts, or immerse yourself in a weekend of music with discussions, films and masterclasses. For details of the full festival programme visit the Ludlow English Song Weekend website.

A unique portrait of the complex, difficult man behind ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Three wonderful singers are joined by Olivier Award-winning stage and screen actor Alex Jennings (The Queen, The Lady in the Van) as A E Housman. Discover the life of the poet through letters and songs, in a moving performance devised by Ludlow Song’s Artistic Director Iain Burnside.

'A Shropshire Lad' inspired a torrent of musical settings, the archetypal English songs of several generations. Yet the poet himself was a difficult man: a tightly buttoned, unapproachable Classics professor who refused to suffer fools and disliked music. We unravel some of his many complexities, interweaving his letters through some of the magical songs his poems, contrary to his wishes, inspired.

“Burnside’s vivid narrative is extraordinarily moving.” What’s On Stage review of ‘A Soldier and a Maker’, a portrait of Ivor Gurney