Britain's What's On Event Guide
A Celebration of British Music Past & Present
Showcasing Cecilia McDowall’s Da Vinci Requiem. Written in 2019, this significant seven-movement work from Cecilia McDowall presents an imaginative pairing of extracts from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci with texts from the Latin Missa pro defunctis. Da Vinci’s reflective and penetrating insights into the nature of mortality and all that it encompasses cast new light on the familiar Requiem texts, and McDowall employs her orchestral forces to create a rich, atmospheric backdrop to the profound narrative presented by the chorus and soprano and baritone soloists. Dark, sonorous writing precedes an energetic ‘Sanctus’, and the closing bars of the luminous ‘Lux aeterna’ create a powerful allusion to da Vinci’s concept of ‘The Perspective of Disappearance’.
City Chamber Choir pair this emerging modern masterpiece with the solemn and moving Songs of Farewell by Parry. Representing a pinnacle of choral writing from the early twentieth century, part of it was sung at the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II.
To complement the choral programme, Finzi’s bucolic Eclogue for piano and orchestra based on an archaic form of poem based on a conversation between two shepherds, truly encapsulates a British musical celebration.
‘Cecilia McDowall is another of the new generation of highly communicative musicians who favours writing which, without being in any way facile, is brightly cogent, freshly witty and expressive in its own right.’
GRAMOPHONE
‘There was nothing lacking in invention, in this new work. The musical and emotional contrasts were tangible. At the outset, the glowering darkness of the Philharmonia’s woodwind, taken up by rich textures in the chorus, with a periodic rocking motion, and the alternation, then unifying, of the soloists all had a mesmerising effect.’
CHURCH TIMES – on the da Vinci Requiem
City Chamber Choir is grateful to the Sir Edward Lewis Foundation for financial support.
City Chamber Choir pair this emerging modern masterpiece with the solemn and moving Songs of Farewell by Parry. Representing a pinnacle of choral writing from the early twentieth century, part of it was sung at the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II.
To complement the choral programme, Finzi’s bucolic Eclogue for piano and orchestra based on an archaic form of poem based on a conversation between two shepherds, truly encapsulates a British musical celebration.
‘Cecilia McDowall is another of the new generation of highly communicative musicians who favours writing which, without being in any way facile, is brightly cogent, freshly witty and expressive in its own right.’
GRAMOPHONE
‘There was nothing lacking in invention, in this new work. The musical and emotional contrasts were tangible. At the outset, the glowering darkness of the Philharmonia’s woodwind, taken up by rich textures in the chorus, with a periodic rocking motion, and the alternation, then unifying, of the soloists all had a mesmerising effect.’
CHURCH TIMES – on the da Vinci Requiem
City Chamber Choir is grateful to the Sir Edward Lewis Foundation for financial support.
7:30pm Tuesday, 21 March 2023
Full price £25
Early bird £20 (book before 7 March 2023)
Student £15
Under 12 Free
Buy online from www.ticketsource.co.uk/city-chamber-choir or at the door.
Full price £25
Early bird £20 (book before 7 March 2023)
Student £15
Under 12 Free
Buy online from www.ticketsource.co.uk/city-chamber-choir or at the door.
Holy Sepulchre, Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2DQ
Tue 21 Mar 2023
Website:
citychamberchoir.org.uk/
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