Prom 6: Vaughan Williams and Tippett – Full Fourths by Vaughan Williams, Tippett, From (2022/2022), Conductor Andrew Davis, Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom

British music: it isn’t always what you think. Written as Europe lurched towards war, Vaughan Williams’s volcanic Fourth Symphony is a mighty cry of protest and rage, expressed in music that burns itself into the soul. A generation later in the Cold War, Michael Tippett began his final symphony with the most primal of sounds – a human breath. This isn’t so much a symphony as a whole life, in all its rapture, its chaos and its teeming, tumultuous beauty. The BBC Philharmonic returns for its second Prom of the season to give both works their due under the ever-reliable baton of Sir Andrew Davis.