SATURDAY 7 NOVEMBER 4-5PM St Mary’s Church, Todmorden ENTRY BY DONATION
This autumn charity concert by the Hepton Singers will be a blend of music in praise of nature alongside a selection of stunningly beautiful sacred music from across four centuries. The programme will include works by one of the towering musical figures of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, William Byrd, as well one of the brightest stars of the classical music world active today, organist and composer Anna Lapwood. Other contemporary composers represented are the Estonian Arvo Pärt alongside the American Eric Whitacre. Finally, the concert will include a performance of one of Tchaikovsky’s remarkable choral works, his great Cherubic Hymn from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER, 5.30pm, HEPTONSTALL CHURCH £10/£8/£1 (u-18)
The centrepiece of this early evening candlelight concert will be William Byrd’s monumental six movement Mass for Four Voices. Written in the 1590s during the reign of Elizabeth I, it is one of the high points of the English Renaissance, both in terms of the emotional journey it takes the listener on, and the level of technical virtuosity it achieves in its musical writing.
Alongside William Byrd, there are works by contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, Anna Lapwood, and another rising star of the English classical music world, Lucy Walker represented by her setting for Candlemas of the ancient Latin text O nata lux de lumine, O Light born of Light. There are pieces to mark the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, notably Eric Whitacre’s iconic setting of Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. There will also be musical grandeur, most especially Tchaikovsky’s sublime Cherubic Hymn, as well as Giovanni Gabrieli’s exultant motet O magnum Mysterium, O great mystery, written for two choirs.
