Bruckner, Britten and a World Première

Camden Choir

The ever adventurous Camden Choir, under its Musical Director Julian Williamson, pays another visit to St Paul’s, Covent Garden (the Actors’ Church), on Saturday 23 March 2019 at 7.30 pm to perform an eclectic programme of 19th, 20th and 21st century music. The Austrian composer Anton Bruckner’s Requiem in D minor was his first large-scale work. It was written in memory of Franz Sailer, the Clerk of St Florian Monastery (in the Linz-Land district of Upper Austria), where Bruckner was resident organist at the time. Sailer had bequeathed his Bösendorfer grand piano to him, on which he worked at the piece. He completed the score on 14 March 1849, just in time for the first anniversary of his patron’s death. In 1892, Bruckner revised the Requiem and declared it ‘Not at all bad’. It will be performed this evening with organ, French horn and three trombones, as he specified.

Benjamin Britten’s Choral Dances are taken from his 1953 opera Gloriana, commissioned by the Royal Opera to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was not well received at the time and has only occasionally been staged since. The six dances form part of a pageant for the monarch during her state visit to Norwich. Dancers representing Time and Concord, country girls, and young rustics and fishermen all pay homage and tribute to the Queen.

In 2016, the Choir performed MIA TErra, a work commissioned by the London City Orchestra from the rising young British composer Dani Howard. As a result, our Chairman, Roger Carter, has asked her to write a short choral work dedicated to his wife Alexa. The words are taken from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (Fear no more the heat o’ the sun) and W.B. Yeats’ Cloths Of Heaven (Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths). The piece is scored for four-part choir with piano