Proms 2026 Vaughan Williams’s ‘Fantasia’ and Symphony No. 9

Andrew Manze conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in a celebration of English music, including a commission from Carmel Smickersgill exploring resilience in the face of tragedy. The starkly beautiful landscape of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex haunts the score of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 9 – pastoral yearning tinged with darker wartime memories and fears, a contrast to the radiant spiritual affirmation of the composer’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, with its shimmering clouds of strings. ‘Eloquent’ Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma makes her Proms debut in Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto, another work steeped in thoughts of war and hopes of peace.

Simone Lamsma © Otto van den Toorn