Portsmouth Baroque Choir returns to the Festival in Chichester for a Summer concert 'Times and Seasons' featuring Jonathan Dove’s 'The Passing of the Year', John Rutter’s 'Five Childhood Lyrics' and Vaughan Williams’ 'Serenade to Music'. A selection of madrigals and part-songs complete the programme. The concert opens with a trio of well-known madrigals and a part song by Elgar. Jonathan Dove’s 'The Passing of the Year'' dates from 2000 and is fast becoming a modern classic having been recorded three times already most notably by Voces 8 with the composer at the piano. John Rutter’s 'Five Childhood Lyrics' are arrangements of (mostly) well-known nursery rhymes. They date from 1973 early in his career but sound as fresh and dynamic as ever. Mendelssohn’s Sechs Lieder (Six songs) Op. 59 were written to be sung outdoors. Settings of poems by Goethe, Eichendorff, Chézy and Uhland they lead us to the heart of the Romantic preoccupation with the self at one with time and Nature a liberating philosophy tempered by an acute awareness of the unattainable. Vaughan Williams 'Serenade to Music' needs little introduction save that its sets lines from Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' in which the characters consider the best time to appreciate the 'music of the spheres'. Originally written for sixteen solo singers and orchestra it will be performed in a version for four soloists (drawn from the choir) and piano accompaniment along with some instrumental colour... See more >