Our first lunchtime recital of the Summer Term was dedicated to the first performances of seven brand new works by Upper School musicians. Featuring a variety of works for choir, songs with obbligato instruments, and a solo organ toccata, it was real privilege to share these wonderful works with an audience for the very first time.
The majority of the pieces respond to texts and in some cases, these original pieces of music have been inspired by pre-existing works. Ben’s vocal experience of Ave verum corpus was inspired by settings by Byrd, Elgar, Mozart & Ben Parry, and his knowledge of Gigout’s Toccata in B minor. Grace’s studies of Nunc dimittis were inspired by settings by Holst, Naylor and Łukaszewski. Two of the pieces respond to same text – Henry Cholmondeley-Pennell’s sinister poem Ah, Who? – whilst Roberto expresses his own socio-cultural identity with a setting of a poem by Theodor Storm (also set by Brahms) which also quotes themes from the Niedersachsenlied, the regional anthem of Lower Saxony in Germany
We are indebted to a wide range of performers involved in this recital which can be found here.
