Following their acclaimed series of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra led by Andrew Manze presents a collection of works by two composers influenced by Vaughan Williams. George Butterworth left a small but enduring body of work. He was introduced to folk music by Vaughan Williams, but he was also a dancer and collector of folk songs and dances – especially those from Sussex. However, it is his A.E Houseman inspired orchestral rhapsody A Shropshire Lad that has become his most famous composition, conjuring up a powerful sense of the countryside, and melancholy at the waste and futility of war. Gustav Holst was also a friend of Vaughan Williams. Together, the two of them collected folk songs from around England, some of which can be heard in Holst’s Two Songs without Words, Op. 22. The program also includes Butterworth’s Two English Idylls (founded on folk tunes) and The Banks of Green Willow, as well as Holst’s Egdon Heath, A Fugal Concerto, and St. Paul’s Suite.