SIR Edward Elgar has been displaced from top spot in a poll to find the nation's favourite British classical work - but is still in the top 10 twice.

Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending pushed Worcestershire-born Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor and Variations On An Original Theme into second and third place respectively.

Welsh musician and composer Karl Jenkins came fourth with The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace and is the only living composer in the top ten.

Another Vaughan Williams work, Fantasia On A Theme Of Thomas Tallis, came fifth in the survey of listeners to radio station Classic FM.

Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Handel - who became a British citizen in 1727 - are the most popular British composers with five works each in the list of 30 pieces.

Despite the fact that he had lost the top spot, the news that Elgar had two pieces in the

top 10 was met with delight at the Elgar Birthplace Museum in Lower Broadheath, near Worcester.

Cathy Sloan, museum director, said: "I think it is excellent. Elgar had some excellent composers to compete with and I don't think it is disappointing at all that he did not reach the number one spot.

"Classic FM have always been great supporters of Elgar and I am not surprised that listeners have rated him so highly."

Described by the composer as "an English landscape transcribed into musical terms", Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending takes its title from a poem by George Meredith, with the solo violin evoking the lark as it soars above the English countryside.

Darren Henley, Classic FM's station manager, said: "The UK has produced some of history's greatest classical composers, so it comes as little surprise that this chart should be so closely contested."

The poll was carried out to mark UK Music Week, a celebration on the whole of commercial radio of the best of the UK's musicians.