To open its 2018-9 season Londinium presents a thrilling programme of works on the theme of weird and wonderful creatures. Kenneth Leighton's unpublished Laudes Animantium ('Praises of the Creatures') is a superb sequence of poems about animals, from Blake's Lamb and Tyger to Tennyson's Kraken, by way of Edward Lear and others, and finds its composer at the height of his powers. Ola Gjeilo's Unicornis Captivatur, based on remarkable fifteenth-century chants, introduces us to the unicorn, pelican, phoenix, hydra and crocodile. Finally, Bernard Hughes' 2011 A Medieval Bestiary explores the relationship between medieval man and the animal world. The dramatis personae, taken from a thirteenth-century source, include the manticore, parander, gryphon, monoceros, dragon, panther, and scorpion, and Hughes' music is no less inventive and exhilarating.
Londinium (chamber choir) | Andrew Griffiths (conductor)
