Delius – The Walk to the Paradise Garden
Delius – Sea Drift
Elgar – The Music Makers
VENUE: All Hallows’ Church, Savernake Road, Gospel Oak, London NW3 2JP
MEZZO SOPRANO: Catherine Hopper
BARITONE: Marcus Farnsworth
Our first concert of 2017 is an all-British affair featuring two towering figures of 20th-century music, Delius and Elgar.
The concert begins with the highly attractive Walk to the Paradise Garden, an orchestral interlude from Delius’s opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet. The motion of waves is suggested throughout by the orchestra in Sea Drift, while the choir sings the tale of a pair of mocking birds nesting on the sea shore in a setting by Walt Whitman.
In The Music Makers Elgar also sets an entire poem, Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy, to much original music punctuated with quotes from previous compositions including The Dream of Gerontius, Sea Pictures, the First Symphony, the Enigma Variations and Rule, Britannia.