Concert: April 2025
Magnificat
Emotions of great joy, devotion and consolation flow through our Spring concert programme from Baroque and Romantic eras and some of their finest composers.
Antonio Vivaldi’s dramatic setting of the Magnificat joyfully expresses Mary’s joy and wonder. Its nine concise movements dramatise many moods, from the grand opening to the reassurance of God’s promise to His people, which would have been composed for his female choir at Venice’s Ospedale della Pièta.
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Baldassari Galuppi’s setting of Dixit Dominus sits within his body of 73 psalms and related settings, themselves within his 284 sacred works. Galuppi was prolific composer who became maestro of St Mark’s, Venice, maestro di cappella to Catherine the Great in Moscow and maestro di coro at the Ospedale deli Incurabili in Venice.
We perform Schubert’s setting of Gott ist mein Hirt with two settings of Ave Maria by Anton Bruckner from his Motets Opus 12 and, in a longer form, by the C20 composer Franz Biebl.
Of Anton Bruckner’s 40 sacred Motets written between 1869-96, the five short pieces we perform mark various religious events and spiritual qualities, each with its own intimate musical mood.
Elgar’s Nimrod, variation 9 of his Enigma Variations is the setting for Cameron’s arrangement of the Lux Aeterna text from the Requiem for the Dead, ending Eternal rest give to them, O Lord And let perpetual light shine upon them With thy saints for evermore, for Thou art gracious.
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