Wimbledon Choral – Reflections & Inspirations – 7:30pm
This concert is a wonderful opportunity for you to enjoy some classic choral favourites together with new works inspired by them. You will hear pieces by Brahms, Elgar, Higgins, Lauridsen, Wood and others. This promises to be an enjoyable and uplifting evening!
Every now and then, it’s good to take stock of some of the amazing choral material that is being and has been written, especially by British composers. We are very fortunate that this country has such a rich vein of musical composing talent. This concert is an opportunity to give these new works and others from recent decades a proper airing.
One of the projects run by Neil & Michael’s professional group, Sonoro, is called Choral Inspirations. The aim of this has been to take existing, well-known choral works and to commission contemporary composers to re-imagine the work as a whole or the text or the score in their own style. The output from this has been nothing short of astonishing and has, to date, added 12 new works to the choral repertoire. Some of these appear in this concert’s programme.
The programme for this concert is drawn from many corners of this world and includes:
Elgar : The Spirit of the Lord
Tarney : The Spirit of the Lord (re-imagined Elgar)
Brahms : Geistliches Lied
Higgins : See I am God (re-imagined Brahms)
Smith Moore : We shall walk through the valley
Dett : O Holy Lord
Dale : Panis Angelicus (re-imagined from Franck’s original)
Treseder : Jesu, joy of our desiring (re-imagined from Bach’s original)
Todd : Locus Iste
Gjeilo : Northern Lights
Lauridsen : Sure on this shining night
Harris : Holy is the true light
Wood : Hail, gladdening light
Upcoming Events
London Oriana Choir – Path of Miracles –
Composer Joby Talbot’s acclaimed choral work, Path of Miracles, takes its inspiration from the famous ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago di Compostela in northern Spain, chronicling the 500-mile journey from the foot of the northern Pyrenees. Join London Oriana Choir, special guest singers from the award-winning, original commissioning ensemble Tenebrae and Dominic Ellis-Peckham for a truly memorable and dramatic performance of this unique choral masterpiece.
The Esterhazy Singers – Haydn’s St Nicholas Mass, and Holst’s The Cloud Messenger – 7pm
Haydn’s mass was dedicated to Nicolaus Esterhazy, his patron from whom we take our name, and in this performance it is paired with Holst’s little known choral masterpiece, considered by the composer one of his best works.
Doors open from 6:30pm for a 7pm performance. Tickets are £25, or £10 for under 25 year olds, and are available at the website below or on the door. Programmes will be available for purchase on the door for £2.
London Concert Choir – Howells Requiem & Stainer The Crucifixion – 7.30pm
in London Concert Choir for an evening of sacred music from two of the great English choral composers, in the perfect setting.
The understated beauty and emotion of Herbert Howells’ interwar Requiem offers the perfect foil for the reverent Victorian grandeur of John Stainer’s Passiontide oratorio, The Crucifixion.
Howells’ unaccompanied Requiem brings his unmistakable compositional voice and very personal interpretation to the Church’s liturgy for the dead. Composed in 1932, but unpublished until 1980, it provided the genesis of the more complex and widely acclaimed Hymnus Paradisi. With characteristic precision and clarity, Howells evokes loss, grief, reflection and redemption, blending elements of the Latin mass and The Book of Common Prayer.