Saturday 9 November 2024

7.30pm

(ends 9.30pm approximately)

The Apex, Charter Square, Bury St Edmunds

Holst & Fauré: Pathways to Paradise

A choral journey through eight superb sacred masterpieces

Imogen Holst      Mass in A minor

Gustav Holst       Hymn of Jesus (Op.37)

Gabriel Fauré      String quartet in E minor (Op. 121)

                              Cantique de Jean Racine

                              Tu es Petrus   Sancta Mater

                              Ecce Fidelis    Tantum Ergo

                              In Paradisum

United Strings of Europe

Anne Reece piano

Bury Bach Choir

Benedict Collins Rice conductor

This concert brings together two significant anniversaries - the 150^th anniversary of Gustav Holst’s birth, and the 100^th anniversary of the death of Gabriel Fauré - with a journey through some of their truly beautiful sacred choral masterpieces. We also include a short Mass by Gustav Holst’s daughter Imogen.

Imogen Holst, who was Suffolk based, was an important figure in British musical life for several decades through her compositions and through her work as Artistic Director of Aldeburgh Festival and assistant to Benjamin Britten. Her concisely and beautifully crafted Mass in A minor, written when she was just twenty, is for performance by an unaccompanied SSATB choir.

Gustav Holst’s music was influenced by his great friend Ralph Vaughan Williams with whom he collaborated over many years. His Hymn of Jesus is scored for two mixed choruses and one women’s semi-chorus, and we are performing the version accompanied by piano and strings. When first performed just after the First World War it received high accolades and was widely acknowledged as belonging in the front rank of English choral music, being described by The Times as “undoubtedly the most strikingly original choral work which has been produced in this country for many years”. It was performed frequently through the 1920’s in the UK and the US.

After the interval we turn to the music of French composer Gabriel Fauré, starting with his final composition, the string quartet in E minor. This will be followed by six choral pieces.  His Cantique de Jean Racine, with its wonderfully rich melody, resonates with hope and joy, as do the four short motets that follow, and the concert ends on a rapturous note with his incomparable In Paradisum.

All seats reserved

Booking opens 9 September 2024

Tickets £25, £20 and £15 (half price for under-30s) plus Apex booking fee £2.00 

Early booking discount £1 off all full price tickets booked by 30 September 2024

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