Art News

Great British Composers: From Elgar to Ades at the National Portrait Gallery

LONDON.- To coincide with the launch of the 2010 BBC Proms, a new photographic display at the National Portrait Gallery celebrates remarkable achievements in twentieth-century British classical music. The display comprises 31 photographs of British composers who, collectively, define a great modern tradition. Beginning with Edward Elgar, whose music has links with nineteenth-century romanticism, the selection of portraits traces a trajectory linking Delius, Vaughan Williams and Walton to more recent developments represented by the music of Birtwistle and Adès. Curator Paul Moorhouse says: ‘A common thread linking these composers is the way their work refracted British musical traditions through wider, contemporary influences. Elgar is usually regarded as a quintessentially English composer, but his orchestral music has close affinities with a central European tradition typified at that time by Richard Strauss. Vaughan Williams’