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Sunday, July 26, 2009 at 5:00 p.m.

ARTISTS

PROGRAM

Franz Schubert  -  Sanctus from Deutsches Messe
Henry Purcell  -  Hear my prayer, O Lord
Orlando Di Lasso  -  Timor et tremor
Francis Poulenc  -  Videntes Stellam
Paul Stanhope  -  Exile Lamentations world premiere
Felix Mendelssohn  -  Mein Gott, warum du mich verlassen
B. Britten arr. Colin Matthews  -  Carry her over the water
Bach/Marlow  -  Advent Responsory
J.S Bach  -  Singet den Herrn

Berlioz is quoted as saying, “There is one god - Bach - and Mendelssohn is his prophet”. It is this relationship between Bach and Mendelssohn, which dominates the second half of the MSO Chorus’s debut recital.

Mendelssohn, whose 200th birthday the MSO celebrates in 2009, was in the forefront of the nineteenth-century revival of Bach’s music, conducting the first ‘modern’ performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. His a cappella music owes a powerful debt to Bach’s influence most especially in its relationship to the Protestant chorale whose ethos of powerful musical simplicity and direct religious appeal is a distinct feature of his setting of Psalm 22. Benjamin Britten’s part-song, Carry her over the water, from the opera Paul Bunyan, carries the spirit and direct expression of a spiritual, while at the heart of Richard Marlow’s Advent Responsory lies the great chorale, ‘Sleepers, wake! In a compositional output dominated by the voice, nothing is more profoundly joyous than Bach’s motet for double-choir, Singet dem Herrn, based on the chorale Nun lo, mein Seel, with which this recital will finish.

Such a joyous end is a wonderful counter-balance to the first halves exquisite musical prayers of lamentation and appeal, from Orlando di Lasso in 16th Century Europe to Paul Stanhope in 21st Century Sydney, by way of Henry Purcell (celebrating his 350th birthday), Schubert and Poulenc. A co-commission between Melbourne Symphony Chorus, Sydney Chamber Choir and London’s Elysian Singers, Paul Stanhope’s Lamentation is a powerfully expressive setting of Biblical texts and the poems of exile by Palestinian writer, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra.