Summer in the Alps
12 April 2021
The potential for live music-making is still
frustratingly far away as the repercussions of Covid-19 continue to
circulate. We are hopeful that on Monday 17 May the country will
move into step 3 of the relaxation of rules, and we will be able to
meet to sing live in rehearsal, albeit in a very gentle and
uncertain way.
Summer in the Alps
In the meantime we have a wonderful programme of music for our Zoom
Home Choir sessions, which explores music in Austria, Germany, and
the United Kingdom, at the turn of the twentieth-century. In
particular it focuses on what it took for the English Musical
Renaissance to start, and whether there is any credibility in the
claim that between Purcell and Elgar, say, Britain was indeed Das
Land ohne Musik.
Elgar Timeline
Last term all of our Musical Director’s choirs were singing
repertoire from different areas and periods - Bach, Dvořák, Forrest,
Haydn, Janáček, Mozart, Sullivan, and more. This meant that our
Fridays at Four expert sessions were very diverse. This term,
however, all his choirs are singing music connected to Sir Edward
Elgar and/or composed during his lifetime.
The Royal Leamington Spa Bach Choir are exploring British music with
a Sea theme, including works by Coleridge-Taylor, Elgar, Ireland,
Florence Ashton Marshall, and Stanford. The Huntingdonshire
Philharmonic are singing Cathedral classics from the period, with
music by Bairstow, Elgar, E. W. Naylor, Parry, Alice Mary Smith,
Stanford, and Wood. The Wellingborough Singer are singing a varied
programme of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s sacred and secular choral music.
Our programme is as follows:
•
From the Bavarian Highlands - Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
•
Rückert-Lieder - Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) arr. Lee
Dunleavy
•
Prologue from Der Wald - Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
•
An der schönen, blauen Donau - Johann Strauss II (1825-99)
•
Morgen! - Richard Strauss (1864-1949) arr. Lee Dunleavy
We are hugely looking forward to singing this glorious music,
especially revisiting one of our MD’s passions - Mahler - and one of
the few pieces by Sir Edward Elgar which we have never in our
80-year history performed, From the Bavarian Highlands.
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