Chichester Singers celebrate three of the greatest English composers

As musical director Jonathan Willcocks says: “Composers and all artists produce their works, and it is then the distillation of time which then results in whether history will regard them as great composers or whether history will rather neglect them.

“But I think these three Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Tippett – along with Britten, Walton and Holst – after 100 years are the really established, major figures.

“Tippett’s A Child of Our Time was the big work we wanted to build a programme around, and we thought that it would be good to have the theme of English composers from the first half of the 20th century.

“It makes a lovely selection, two of the great choral works and Elgar’s Enigma Variations, one of the great orchestral pieces.

“A Child of Our Time was inspired by the terrible oppression of the Jews in the years preceding and during the Second World War and is, alongside Britten – War Requiem, the most powerful choral work to emerge from those dark times.

“It has at its heart settings of five spirituals – themselves songs of oppression – and has an overall message of protest against all that war and conflict inevitably results in, Tippett being imprisoned for a period during WW2 for his pacifist views.