Music for Good Friday: Ein deutsches Requiem at Leeds Minster, Leeds on Friday 25th March 2016

Please note: This concert is in the past and has already taken place.

Music for Good Friday

Ein deutsches Requiem

Add to my Calendar 25-03-2016 19:00 25-03-2016 21:00 36 Music for Good Friday The long-established custom of the presentation of special sacred music by St Peter’s Singers in the evening of Good Friday at Leeds Minster dates back many years. This event is held with generous support provided by the Friends of the Music of Leeds Minster. At 7pm on Good Friday 2016, the occasion includes music by Johannes Brahms and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The first half of the evening unfolds from two magical motets by Brahms: Warum ist das Licht gegeben and the Geistliches Lied, a true masterpiece in miniature with deeply expressive organ accompaniment. Founder-leader of the Orchestra of Opera North, violinist David Greed, is our special guest artist for the evening and he will bring the first half to a close with a performance of Vaughan Williams’s visionary Romance for violin and orchestra – The Lark ascending – inspired by a poem by George Meredith. The work exists in at least three versions, of which that used on Good Friday is certainly the superior in terms of musical balance. It seems that Vaughan Williams may well have completed its composition by 1914, but revised it after the Great War prior to its two premières and subsequent publication five years later. The catalyst for this remarkable and strongly eloquent recitative was George Meredith’s glorious poem printed in the preface to the score and from which The Lark Ascending takes its title. The music itself is through and through a reflection of the natural ebb and flow of the verbiage as well as of the mental and visual imageries Meredith’s muse conjurs up so very vividly. The second half of the concert is given over to Brahms’s seven-movement German Requiem. This is no conventional Requiem deploying the Latin Missa pro defunctis but a beautifully meditative concept drawing on texts from the New as well as the Old Testament. Its glorious orchestral scoring and searingly beautiful writing for choir and the two vocal soloists make for a heady mixture of memorable and often deeply meditative music that makes the work especially appropriate for hearing on the most solemn day of the church’s year – Good Friday. Leeds Minster, Leeds DD/MM/YYYY

Details

Leeds Minster
Kirkgate
Leeds
LS2 7DJ
England

Friday 25th March 2016
7:00 PM

Programme

Johannes Brahms – Warum ist das Licht gegeben?, Op.74 no.1
Johannes Brahms – Geistliches Lied, Op.30
Ralph Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending
~ Interval ~
Johannes Brahms – Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op.45

Performers

Kristina James – soprano
Quentin Brown – baritone
David Greed – Violin
David Houlder – organ
Simon Lindley – Conductor

St Peter's Singers
Principals of the National Festival Orchestra

Programme Note

The long-established custom of the presentation of special sacred music by St Peter’s Singers in the evening of Good Friday at Leeds Minster dates back many years. This event is held with generous support provided by the Friends of the Music of Leeds Minster.

At 7pm on Good Friday 2016, the occasion includes music by Johannes Brahms and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The first half of the evening unfolds from two magical motets by Brahms: Warum ist das Licht gegeben and the Geistliches Lied, a true masterpiece in miniature with deeply expressive organ accompaniment.

Founder-leader of the Orchestra of Opera North, violinist David Greed, is our special guest artist for the evening and he will bring the first half to a close with a performance of Vaughan Williams’s visionary Romance for violin and orchestra – The Lark ascending – inspired by a poem by George Meredith.

The work exists in at least three versions, of which that used on Good Friday is certainly the superior in terms of musical balance. It seems that Vaughan Williams may well have completed its composition by 1914, but revised it after the Great War prior to its two premières and subsequent publication five years later.

The catalyst for this remarkable and strongly eloquent recitative was George Meredith’s glorious poem printed in the preface to the score and from which The Lark Ascending takes its title. The music itself is through and through a reflection of the natural ebb and flow of the verbiage as well as of the mental and visual imageries Meredith’s muse conjurs up so very vividly.

The second half of the concert is given over to Brahms’s seven-movement German Requiem. This is no conventional Requiem deploying the Latin Missa pro defunctis but a beautifully meditative concept drawing on texts from the New as well as the Old Testament. Its glorious orchestral scoring and searingly beautiful writing for choir and the two vocal soloists make for a heady mixture of memorable and often deeply meditative music that makes the work especially appropriate for hearing on the most solemn day of the church’s year – Good Friday.

St Peter's Singers - Music for Good Friday at Leeds Minster

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