The evocative sound world of solo cello and chamber choir gives rise to "Flights of Angels", a moving programme by Bach, Brahms, Tavener and more, which makes the most of the resonant surroundings of Keble College chapel.
For "A Farewell to Arms", musical polymath Richard Rodney Bennett relates the story of a long-retired Jacobean era soldier, reflecting upon a life well lived, battles won and lost, and upon passions lost. The cello takes on the personality of the soldier. Brahms' "Funf Quartette" (Op104) are the product of a great composer's mature pen, written at the same time as the Fourth Symphony. They too draw upon themes clearly personal to Brahms: of the wisdom, and the regrets, of later life; and represent one of the high points of the chamber choir repertoire. John Tavener's haunting and moving "Svyati", a setting of an Orthodox funeral service sentence, will make the most of the resonant surroundings in Keble College Chapel, and transport us to a sequence of works of lamentation - Bach's motet "Ich lasse dich nicht"; Mendelssohn's original a capella German setting of "For he shall give his angels charge over thee"; an evocative piece by the Australian composer Joe Twist based upon the famous lament which closes Carissimi's Jephte; and a new piece by Becky McGlade: "The Oak".