Two weeks ago, the Royal Albert Hall in London saw the musical resurrection. of John Foulds’s A World Requiem to mark Remembrance Sunday. The once popular piece had not been performed for 81 years.

It was composed in the aftermath of the Great War (1914-1918) to commemorate the dead of all nations and was given a warm reception at the time.

For four years in succession, from 1923 to 1926, the Requiem was the centrepiece of the Armistice Day Festival, which in those days brought Britain to a standstill every 11 November.

The Requiem needed 1,250 musicians to perform such was the scale of the work.

Then the Requiem was dropped. So too was the composer, who never heard his piece played again. Foulds died of cholera 13 years later while living in self-imposed exile in India. His pacifist views were shunned by polite society and his work quickly forgotten.

John Foulds was born in Manchester in 1880, the son of a bassoonist in the Halle Orchestra. He played as a cellist in promenade and theatre bands before joining the Halle cellos in 1900.

He had been composing since childhood. During his years as a cellist in the Halle at the beginning of the 20th century he wrote piano music, string quartets, symphonic poems and a vast 3-part concert opera for soloists, chorus and orchestra called The Vision of Dante, based on The Divine Comedy. Only a few of them were ever performed.

However, the conductor Hans Richter gave him conducting experience. Although Henry Wood presented some of Foulds’s early orchestral compositions at the Queen’s Hall Proms, he became best-known as a successful composer of light-music, such as the once-famous Keltic Lament (1911).

He is indeed a forgotten composer, who didn’t fit in with the zeitgeist of post-war Britain. The resurrection of his Requiem is a useful addition to the repertoire.

Sir Edward Elgar would have been 150 in June this year, and something more of a prodigy at that age than even he had been in life.

We all know Elgar’s popular classics, of course, Nimrod from the Enigma Variations, Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 — Land of Hope and Glory — and a rash of wonderfully melodic, string-based compositions that recall Edwardian England like no other. When asked if he used folk music in his work, he repied, “Madam, I write the folk tunes of England”. And so he did.

Yet he accomplished much more than that. The German conductor, Hans Richter, said of his First symphony, “It is the greatest symphony of modern times, and not just in this country [England] either.” Richter premiered it, as well as the Enigma Variations and his oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius.

Although quintessentially English, Elgar’s music was firmly rooted in the Austro-German Romantic tradition. His poor background prevented him from studying in Leipzig. He did, though, get to Bayreuth in 1892 where he experienced the first performance of Wagner’s greatest achievement, Parsifal. He saw it twice and Der Meistersinger four times. Needless to say, he became a passionate Wagnerian for the rest of his life.

Classy Classical will be covering this event throughout this year, including a hoped-for serialization of Steve Newman’s play on Elgar.

To celebrate Elgar’s 150th, the UK’s Daily Mail is offering an Elgar Edition of five CDs with Mark Elder conducting the Halle Orchestra. Works included are :

1. First Symphony; In the South.
2. Enigma Variations; Serenade for Strings; Cockaigne (In London Town).
3. Falstaff; Cello Concerto; Romance; The Smoking Cantata.
4. Second Symphony; Introduction and Allegro for Strings.
5. Froissart; Dream Children; The Music Makers.

Unusually, there’s no website for purchases, but you can ring : +44 (0)1634 832789. The price in sterling is £44.95 ($88).