In Letters from the Front, Williams weaves music around evocative historical texts. The first movement quotes a song by English composer George Butterworth, one of his settings of A.E. Housman's famous poetry From A Shropshire Lad. Sadly, Butterworth died on the Somme in 1916 aged 31. The second movement includes readings of poignant letters to his children from Williams' great-grandfather, killed at Passchendaele in 1917. The third is based around Wilfred Owen's poem Arms and the Boy and also quotes from soldiers' letters and journal entries from Gallipoli, Belgium and France.
Elizabeth Kerr
