Ængles, the Old English word for the Germanic people who settled in Britain, is a playlist programme exploring over 330 years of music from the UK and its close cultural and societal connections.

Thomas Tomkins’ A Sad Pavan for These Distracted Tymes was written in 1649 in response to the execution of Charles I and the destruction of his organ in Worcester Cathedral. Several centuries later, Frank Bridge wrote a set of reverse variations based on the Irish folk tune Londonderry Air. Following this is the first three interruptions by the Australian-born composer and passionate ethnomusicologist Percy Grainger: Walking Tune, written as a whistling accompaniment to a hike in the Scottish Highlands; Spoon River, heard and notated by Capt. Charles H. Robinson at a country dance in Bradford, Illinois (just 142 miles away); and Shepherd’s Hey, a Morris dance tune collected in Bidford in 1906, only 21 miles from Worcester Cathedral.

At the heart of this journey is Eve de Castro-Robinson’s Earth’s Eye, inspired by Henry Thoreau’s words:
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

The programme concludes with Deep River from 24 Negro Melodies by British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, reflecting both his heritage and his deep engagement with African-American spirituals, before the US premiere of Huw Watkins’ String Trio No. 2: seven short movements, each taking a fragment or gesture from the previous one and carrying it in a new direction.