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Details
SJE Arts - St John the Evangelist Church
109A Iffley Road
Oxford
Oxfordshire
OX4 1EH
England
Programme
Arnold Bax – This Worldes Joie
Mårten Jansson – Lo, how a rose e'er blooming
John Muehleisen – The Great 'O' Antiphons: O Emmanuel
Bohuslav Martinů – 4 Songs about Mary: The Annunciation
Bohuslav Martinů – 4 Songs about Mary: A Dream
Bohuslav Martinů – 4 Songs about Mary: Our Lady's Breakfast
Richard Rodney Bennett – Verses on Saint Cecilia's Day (2006)
Peter Warlock – A Cornish Christmas Carol
Dobrinka Tabakova – Alma Redemptoris Mater
Simon Preston – There is no rose
Per Nørgård – Winter Hymn (1984, arr. G Eriksson)
Cecilia McDowall – O Oriens
Herbert Howells – Walking in the Snow
Performers
Matthew Berry – Conductor
Commotio
Programme Note
Join Commotio in the warm and welcoming surroundings of SJE Arts for a concert celebrating the best of Winter. Per Nørgård's Winter Hymn allows melodies, derived from the same material as his 3rd Symphony, to unfurl across each other like fractals developing on an icy window. Nørgård used these melodies, written for the psalms of Ole Sarvig, throughout the 1970s in both choral and instrumental works. Howells' combined two poems by Emeritus Fellow of New College, John Buxton for his work 'Walking in the snow'. Perhaps less well known than some of his other choral works, 'Walking in the snow' displays sonorous choral textures and suspensions quintessential of the composer.
In addition to these secular celebrations of the season, Commotio will sing contemporary settings of seasonal liturgical texts, including selected Advent Antiphons by Cecilia McDowall, and John Muehleisen. Dobrinka Tabakova's contemporary setting of Alma Redemptoris mater plainsong over sonorous choral chords is simple yet scintillating. Warlock's whimsical 'A Cornish Christmas Carol' references a well known carol, giving a very rare opportunity for the choir to sing it in the original Cornish!
