James Macmillan’s new work All the Hills and Vales Along was commissioned by the LSO and 14-18 NOW:WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, with the world premieres taking place at the Cumnock Tryst festival (chamber version) on 6th October and at the Barbican with the LSO (orchestral version) on 4th November.  This affecting memorial to the dead of World War I, featuring the tenor Ian Bostridge, is paired with Shostakovich’s epic Symphony No. 4.

The new work by James Macmillan, in which the London Symphony Chorus with be making the choral contribution, is to commemorate 100 years since the Armistice of 1918, and it remembers the human cost of war.  Setting words by Charles Sorley, a poet killed in action in 1915, it addresses rows of soldiers on their way to the front:

“On, marching men, on / To the gates of death with song / … Give your gladness to earth’s keeping / So be glad, when you are sleeping.”

Part of “For the Fallen: Marking the First World War Centenary”