Two world-renowned artists team up for an intimate program of English music. When not composing operas, Benjamin Britten was an avid explorer of traditional folk songs, arranged primarily for his life partner, tenor Peter Pears. Here, Britten is set in the context of his earlier musical compatriots. His deep ties to the exquisitely moving works of Elizabethan composer John Dowland shed light on his own musical path. The theme of love weaves a thread through the centuries.

The program includes William Walton's Anon in Love, Britten's Folk Songs and Songs from the Chinese, settings of anonymous 16th- and 17th-century lyrics on the subject of "man in love" and a group of songs by Dowland. Eliot Fisk performs Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op. 70.