Sunday, April 12, 2015

Christopher Dylan Herbert in Fauré/Vaughan Williams program


Christopher Dylan Herbert
Christopher Dylan Herbert will be the featured soloist in two performances of Ralph Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs and the Fauré Requiem in New York City next week.

The first performance is at Hunter College in Lenox Hill on Thursday, April 16 with a subsequent performance on April 18 at Our Savior's Atonement Lutheran Church in Washington Heights.

Ralph Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs were written between 1906 and 1911 to texts by the seventeenth-century Welsh-born English poet and Anglican priest George Herbert (1593–1633). The poems come from his 1633 collection The Temple: Sacred Poems.

While Herbert was a priest, Vaughan Williams himself was an atheist at the time, though this did not prevent his setting of verse of an overtly religious inspiration.

Andrew Garland sings Easter from Five Mystical Songs:

The songs supposed to be performed together as a single work, but the styles of each vary quite significantly. The first four songs are quite personal meditations in which the soloist takes a key role, particularly in the third - Love Bade Me Welcome, where the chorus has a wholly supporting role, and the fourth, The Call, in which the chorus does not feature at all. The final Antiphon is probably the most different of all: a triumphant hymn of praise sung either by the chorus alone or by the soloist alone; unlike the previous songs, a separate version is provided for a solo baritone. It is also sometimes performed on its own, as a church anthem for choir and organ: Let all the world in every corner sing.

On May 24th, Christopher Dylan Herbert rejoins the group New York Polyphony for their European tour, which takes them to Amsterdam and then Germany. Check out their website for dates and locations.

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