Summer season Music in Metropolis Church buildings: ‘Love’s Labours’
St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Road, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DA
6 – 15 June 2024
For extra data CLICK HERE
Ten days of concert events of lovely music, programmed round themes of affection, romance and Shakespeare are promised because the Summer season Music in Metropolis Church buildings Pageant returns for its sixth 12 months. Hosted this summer season within the historic church of St Giles-without-Cripplegate inside London’s Sq. Mile, highlights of the programme entitled ‘Love’s Labours’ embrace performances by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Metropolis of London Choir, and soloists Rachel Nicholls, Roderick Williams, Iain Farrington, Nigel Hess, Fenella Humphreys and David Juritz.
Tickets on sale from the web site.
Co-Inventive Director Ian Maclay mentioned: ‘All our concert events at St Giles Cripplegate over the past six years have demonstrated what an exquisite constructing it’s for making music, and in addition for audiences to understand world-class performances on a really intimate scale. Particularly since 2020, folks have been visibly moved by experiencing stay music on this very particular house. The church is steeped in historical past, and we’re intrigued by its shut connections to Shakespeare. Of all his abiding themes, which higher to decide on for this 12 months’s pageant than love, inextricably entwined as it’s with music.’
Conductor Pierre Vallet, opens the Pageant with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in classical romantic favourites, together with Mendelssohn’s early-Romantic ‘Italian’ Symphony, and Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto carried out by soloist Elizabeth Sombart. Fittingly these are prefaced by the heart-lifting overture from incidental music to Shakespeare’s ‘Love’s Labour’s Misplaced’, by Gerald Finzi.
Bringing proceedings to an exuberant finish will probably be a live performance for all of the household, when pianist and composer Iain Farrington joins the Metropolis of London Choir in a efficiency of his new jazz-infused cantata ‘Then Sing We All’ alongside Joseph
Horovitz’s ‘Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo’, that includes famous person soloists, Rachel Nicholls, soprano and baritone Roderick Williams.
‘Then Sing We All’ is written for choir and instrumental ensemble; piano, double bass and drum package. As composer Iain Farrington recollects, ‘I wished to write down a celebratory work utilizing jazz types following the traumatic interval of the pandemic in 2020-1 and to precise one thing of the enjoyment that we expertise when singing collectively.’
Alongside extra reflective numbers, the overall character of the work is jubilant, with a gospel or swing affect, and the choir invited to contribute their very own percussion results. On the choir’s behalf, Jenny Robinson mentioned: ‘St Giles Cripplegate was dwelling to the Metropolis of London Choir between durations of lockdown and the place it gave one of many first post-pandemic stay concert events – a time when our love of singing was felt extra acutely than ever earlier than. The choir has chosen Farrington’s piece as significantly apt for its first outing underneath the baton of recent Music Director, Daniel Hyde.’
‘Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo’ was written and composed in 1970, the primary collaboration of Michael Flanders and Joseph Horovitz. The work is a light-hearted oratorio initially written for kids utilizing in style musical types to inform the well-known story which finally celebrates love of the earth and all who inhabit it. The model being carried out is for baritone soloist, massive refrain and jazz trio, and a recording by the identical forces has not too long ago been launched on Orchid Classics.
There may be greater than slightly mild jazz and blues inflection to this 12 months’s Pageant programme and The Artwork Deco Trio oblige with a choice of romantic songs from the Nice American Songbook, organized and carried out by Iain Farrington, with Peter Sparks, clarinet and Kyle Horch, saxophone. The Metropolis of London Choir additionally carry out Michael Tippett’s emotive 5 Spirituals, from the strongly pacifist oratorio ‘A Baby of our Time’, through which the spirituals characterize the voice of all oppressed folks, in all places.
The Pageant welcomes for the primary time violinist David Juritz with the Curve Ensemble for a beguiling programme of music impressed by love, ardour and tango, that includes each Golden Age Tango and the Nuevo Tango of Astor Piazzolla, incidental music from Cinema Paradiso by Ennio Morricone, romantic music by Gabriel Fauré and extra.
There are two evenings of phrases and music: ‘Meals of Love’ – a glittering event of track, verse and anecdote, devised by Nigel Hess, through which Shakespeare is introduced vividly to life; and a celebration of Fauré, on this the centenary 12 months of his dying, penned and narrated by Jessica Duchen with violinist Fenella Humphreys and pianist Viv McLean, who carry out a number of the biggest French virtuoso violin works of the fin-de-siècle period together with music by Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Chausson and Ravel.
Viv McLean additionally performs a kaleidoscopic programme of romantic music for solo piano, constructed round George Gershwin’s nice love letter to New York, 100 years after its first efficiency.
Pianist Mark Bebbington will be part of string principals from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to play romantic piano quintets by Vaughan Williams and Elgar. ‘I’m delighted to be becoming a member of my RPO buddies for a night of British chamber music, says Bebbington. ‘From the early romantic fervour of Vaughan Williams to the autumnal magic of late Elgar, these two masterful Piano Quintets make good live performance companions.’
Lunchtime concert events characteristic Brother Tree Sound string quartet and Tier3 Trio, with music from Mendelssohn, Dvořák and Liszt, Arensky and Tchaikovsky. Baritone, David Greco, and pianist, Gavin Roberts carry out what is probably probably the most
celebrated of romantic track cycles; Schubert’s ‘Die Schöne Müllerin’.
Metropolis Colleges’ Birthday Live performance: Celebrating their a hundred and thirtieth birthday, the Metropolis of London College for Women joins forces with Metropolis of London College to current songs on a theme of affection and Shakespeare, directed by Richard Quesnel. There’s a specific nod to the Bard’s First Folio, printed 400 years in the past only a stone’s throw from St Giles Cripplegate.
For these eager to discover additional, there are Shakespeare-themed strolling excursions of the Metropolis operating all through the Pageant.
Additional data and guide: Tickets are actually on sale and may be obtained through the web site or on the door, for extra data CLICK HERE.
