Mixing iconic choral works with some of today’s most exciting composers, this programme centres on a theme of rest. Highlights include Joel Thompson’s virtuosic A Prayer for Deliverance, William Harris’s transcendent journey ‘into the house and gate of heaven’ and Richard Rodney Bennett’s tribute to Linda McCartney. The second half features one of the most moving works in the English choral repertoire, a Requiem composed by Herbert Howells after the untimely death of his young son Michael.

Programme

Gustav Holst – The Evening-watch

Cecilia McDowall – Standing as I do before God

Francis Pott – The Souls of the Righteous

Caroline Shaw – And the Swallow

Richard Rodney Bennett – A Good-Night

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Rest

Joel Thompson – A Prayer for Deliverance

INTERVAL

John Tavener – Song for Athene

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Valiant-for-Truth

Robert Pearsall – Lay a garland

Arthur Sullivan – The long day closes

Herbert Howells – Requiem

1. Salvator mundi

2. Psalm 23

3. Requiem aeternam I

4. Psalm 121

5. Requiem aeternam II

6. I heard a voice from Heaven

William Harris – Bring us, O Lord