LONDON ENGLISH SONG FESTIVAL

Welcome to the London English Song Festival, a charity dedicated to nurturing the legacy and widening the knowledge of English song and oratorio in London and throughout the U.K., founded by conductor and pianist William Vann.

Our most recent project was supporting a recording of Elgar’s choral music (‘Light out of Darkness’) by the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea on SOMM Recordings. The recording was supported by the Elgar Society, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society and the LESF’s own crowdfunder. The disc was released on 16th January 2026 and has received a flurry of excellent reviews (including in Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine) and has been in the classical charts. Radio 3 featured the SOMM new Elgar Choral release at 07:16 here and the disc was also Classic FM’s Recording of the Week, with plays every morning on Alexander Armstrong’s show.

I also did an extensive podcast interview on the disc with Martin Cullingford, editor of Gramophone here.

Our 2019/20 project culminated in the performance of Hubert Parry’s stunning oratorio Judith for the first time in London in over a century. We subsequently created the world premiere recording of this neglected masterpiece with Chandos Records, a disc that received glowing reviews in the national press, was BBC Radio 3 Record of the Week and was nominated for a 2020 Gramophone Award in the Choral category.

In September 2022 we partnered again with Chandos Records, Crouch End Festival Chorus and the London Mozart Players to make the world premiere recording of Parry’s first major work for chorus, soloists and orchestra, his cantata Prometheus Unbound. Written for the Gloucester Festival in 1880, it is a powerful and dramatic work, strongly influenced by Wagner yet showing clear signs of Parry’s developing, individual compositional voice. A stunning line-up was been assembled for our recording this September, including some of the finest British singing talent, with which we hope to restore this work to the contemporary musical consciousness once more. Prometheus Unbound was released on Chandos Records on Friday 8th September 2023.

To find out more, get in touch with us via the contact page, and please support the work of the London English Song Festival.

London English Song Festival is a registered charity, no. 1159818