MOZART: REQUIEM
MENDELSSOHN: PSALM 42
WILL TODD: ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
Saturday 5 May 2012
7:30pm
The Sage Gateshead
St Mary's Square, Gateshead Quays, Gateshead NE8 2JR
Click here to download the flyer
The Chorus is delighted to be returning to The Sage for its third visit, with a programme featuring great and much-loved choral classics alongside the latest highly-acclaimed work by north-east composer Will Todd, commissioned by Hertfordshire Chorus in 2011, and receiving its second performance in this concert.
Mozart’s Requiem was composed in Vienna in 1791, during the final year of the composer’s life. It was Mozart’s last composition and is one of his most popular and respected works.
Will Todd on his setting of Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale: “There are soft harmonies and more urgent ones. Quiet reflective moments and massive climactic gestures. The solo violin weaves in and out of the choral textures like a muse, leading the music forward towards the central moment of the poem, ‘now more than ever seems it rich to die’. There are big orchestral colours and very thin and eerie ones. Like the poem I have sought to use a rich harmonic and textural language.”
Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 42 was one of his most successful choral works during his lifetime, and still has great appeal today.
Hertfordshire Chorus is one of the finest and busiest around. In the last year they have performed an a cappella concert in Kings Place, Haydn’s The Seasons in St Albans Abbey, Fauré’s Requiem with the BBC Concert Orchestra for Radio 2, Last Night of the Proms in Rochester Castle, two concerts in London’s Barbican (the world premiere of Will Todd’s Ode to a Nightingale with Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius), Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with Emma Kirkby at Thaxted Festival, Christmas concerts for Bob and Megs Wilson’s Willow Foundation and in the Old Palace at Hatfield House, Music to Die For at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and toured with Noel Gallagher.
Find out more about Hertfordshire Chorus by watching our videos.
Passionate about Singing
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was made during our last visit to The Sage, in 2009. Keats in Concert
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tells the story of the Chorus's latest Commission, Will Todd's Ode to a Nightingale, which features in the forthcoming concert at The Sage Gateshead on 5 May 2012.
Click here to go to our YouTube channel (opens in new window).