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Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.

Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.

Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.

Essay 3: Adrian McNally - producer/arranger/pianist for The Unthanks
Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for his band to perform with Charles Hazelwood's Army of Generals, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra for The Proms, McNally has sought confidence and inspiration along the way from Ralph Vaughan Williams. He finds kinship in a quest to prove that the people's music is anything but common, to draw out and elevate the beauty and truth present in those folk songs fondly but unfairly known as low culture. In his essay, McNally looks at VW's thoughts on National Music and the inescapable relationship between place, community and creativity. At the centre of his essay will be Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It was born out of a tune Vaughan Williams was preoccupied with - a love letter to something that already existed, that inspired him to make something more.

Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer, record producer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for performances with Charles Hazelwood's Army Of Generals, the Royal Liverpool Phil, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra for The Proms.

Writer and reader Adrian McNally
Sound designer Paul Cargill
Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama
Exec producer Eloise Whitmore

Photographic Image by Sarah Mason

A Naked Production for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 3