The author Laurie Lee was a talented musician and travelled with his violin, so it seems natural to interleave his words with music. This production, featuring the Orchestra of the Swan, takes us from the lush Gloucestershire countryside made famous in Cider with Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning to the arid landscapes of Spain, where Lee joined the International Brigades and fought against Franco’s fascists (A Moment of War).
A journey that takes in Lee’s wry comedy as well as the turbulent darker undertows of his writing, and one that has startling resonance with today’s Europe. It features an Anglo-Iberian collage of orchestral music from Elgar and Vaughan Williams to Albéniz, Holst to Turina and Britten to De Falla.
