Hertfordshire Chorus joins Crouch End Festival Chorus and four world-class soloists in the Royal Festival Hall to perform one of Elgar’s greatest choral works, The Kingdom.
Considered by some to be Elgar’s greatest choral work, The Kingdom is a mixture of gentle conversational sections and astonishingly dramatic choral passages. It also features some of Elgar’s finest orchestral writing, and the hauntingly beautiful soprano solo, ‘The sun goeth down’.
In 1906, following the success of The Dream of Gerontius and The Apostles, the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival commissioned Elgar to write a third large oratorio for its festival that year. Conceived as part of a trilogy of oratorios, The Kingdom continues the narrative started in The Apostles. Elgar focuses on the lives of Jesus’ disciples and the Holy Women, in particular on Peter, John, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene in the days surrounding the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and on the work of the early church community. The followers of Jesus are portrayed as down-to-earth ordinary men and women who encounter extraordinary events.
Reviewing Hertfordshire Chorus’s St Albans Cathedral performance of the work in The Elgar Society Journal, Martin Bird wrote that ‘Put simply, it was the finest performance of The Kingdom that I have ever heard, or can ever hope to hear…’
All four soloists on Crouch End Festival Chorus’s acclaimed new recording of The Kingdom will join the choirs in this concert:
- Francesca Chiejina - soprano,
- Dame Sarah Connolly - mezzo-soprano
- Benjamin Hulett - tenor
- Ashley Riches - bass
joined by
- Crouch End Festival Chorus
- Hertfordshire Chorus
- London Orchestra da Camera
- David Temple - Conductor
