Schubert: Mass No 5 in A flat
Mendelssohn: Singet dem Herrn (Sing unto the Lord)
Haydn: Insanae et vanae curae
Beethoven: Overture to Coriolan
Ardent supporters will recall that our November 2024 concert was cancelled because of flooding, so sad.
The upside is that, weather permitting, Brecon Cathedral will soon be filled with a glorious feast of great choral classics, courtesy of the Choral Society and the Brecknock Sinfonia.
This sumptuous programme of works by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Haydn is something special, encompassing the realms of transcendent beauty and high drama.
Although it appears that Schubert never heard it performed, he believed his setting of the Mass in A flat to be his finest. The result apparently of his “extended labours”, the work was composed and revised over a period of some seven years (1818-1826) and was no doubt intended as proof of his mastery of sacred musical idioms; although ignored in the composer’s own lifetime, it has come to be regarded as a truly remarkable work, full of radiant tunefulness and deep emotion at every turn.
The programme features a rousing and rarely heard Psalm setting for double choir and soloists by Mendelssohn, Singet dem Herrn, an iridescent piece composed to inaugurate the composer’s appointment as musical director at Berlin Cathedral in 1844. This is a real choral tour de force, the psalm’s ecstatic words cast in the great Handelian oratorio tradition.
By contrast, Haydn’s short motet Insanae et vanae curae is a highly-charged stand-alone piece derived from the composer’s first oratorio “The Return of Tobias”; it has long been a firm favourite with choirs.We are delighted to be collaborating again with the Brecknock Sinfonia for this project and are very much looking forward to hearing these great pieces reverberate around the Cathedral’s sacred space.
Tickets cost £15 (£15.50 online) and are now on sale. Click here.
Or email: tickets@crickhowellchoralsociety.org
Also available at Webbs of Crickhowell, or call 07816 991501.
Free for children and students.
