In our Spring concert, we are delighted to announce that we will be joined by our friends in the Voci Chamber Choir of Windsor for an evening of British partsong. Tender and delicate, rousing and symphonic, this concert will include some of the finest English language choral music.
The British partsong repertoire is all too often overlooked. In the best hands – Elgar, Finzi, Holst and Vaughan Williams – choral song is a wonderful, expressive vehicle to deliver a poem. Landscapes, love, a party, even the weather can be captured in sound by a great composer who understands the medium.
We have gathered together a selection of some of the finest partsongs: comfortable companions like The Bluebird and Lay a Garland, as well as distinctive rarities from Coleridge Taylor, Quilter and others. A visit from our Windsor friends, the lovely chamber choir Voci, gives us an opportunity to explore together some of Elgar’s broader settings, really intended for a supple chorus rather than a chamber choir. Love’s Tempest and The Fountain are almost symphonic in conception and Exeter College Chapel will be filled with the sound of the combined choirs in this powerful music.
- Coleridge Taylor: Song of Proserpine
- Elgar: The Prince of Sleep; The Shower; The Fountain; Love’s Tempest
- Finzi: My spirit sang all day; I praise the tender flower
- Ireland: The hills
- Holst: I love my love; My sweetheart’s like Venus
- Pearsall: Lay a garland; Who shall have my lady fair?
- Quilter: The pretty birds
- Rutter: Dashing away with a smoothing iron
- Stanford: The bluebird
- Sullivan: The long day closes
- Vaughan Williams: Five English Folk Songs; Silence and Music
Tickets cost £15 (£12 concessions, £5 students and under 18s), and are available from Tickets Oxford, from the Oxford Playhouse (01865 305305), from members of the choir in advance, or on the door if there are any left ... we hope to see you there!