Saturday 15 June 2024, 7pm

at St. George's Church, Beckenham BR3 1AX

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BERNSTEIN - Chichester Psalms

CHILCOTT - Songs and Cries of London Town

SHEARING - Songs and Sonnets

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Conductor: Mark Griffiths

 

Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms were commissioned for performance at Chichester Cathedral as part of the 1965 Southern Cathedrals Festival. The Dean, a noted champion of the arts, requested that the music contain ‘a hint of West Side Story’ and Bernstein said he wanted the music to be "forthright, songful, rhythmic, youthful."

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The text is in Hebrew, using the melodic and rhythmic contours of the language to dictate mood and character. By combining the Hebrew with the Christian choral tradition, Bernstein was implicitly issuing a plea for peace in Israel during a turbulent time in the young country’s history - a plea which remains as tragically relevant today.

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Songs and Sonnets is a setting of seven of Shakespeare’s songs and sonnets by the celebrated Grammy Award winning British jazz pianist George Shearing. These accessible and melodic pieces were written for choir, piano and string bass and first performed in 1999, conducted by John Rutter.

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The popular choral composer Bob Chilcott’s Songs and Cries of London Town is a vibrant and varied choral cantata in five movements, with words by Orlando Gibbons, William Dunbar and William Wordsworth. The piece gives a very evocative impression of London’s sights, sounds and moods.

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