Vivaldi – Gloria
Vivaldi – Magnificat
Pergolesi/Durante – Magnificat
Zelenka – Litaniae de Venerabili Sacramento

VENUE: All Hallows Church, Savernake Road, London NW3 2JP
SOPRANO: He Wu
COUNTER TENOR: Keith Pun
TENOR: Jorge Navarro Colorado
BASS: Felix Kemp
CONDUCTOR: Ronald Corp
ORCHESTRA: New London Orchestra

HCS’s July concert programme presents a feast of sacred choral music from the Baroque period, including both familiar and less well-known pieces by contemporaries of Bach.

Vivaldi’s Magnificat in G Minor (RV 610) is a setting of the Song of Mary from the gospel of St Luke. Scored for mixed choir, solo voices and small orchestra in nine movements, the earliest version was probably composed in 1715 for the Ospedale della Pietà – the orphanage in Venice where Vivaldi was employed as violin master. Though much less well-known than his Gloria, Vivaldi’s Magnificat is no lesser a work in displaying the brilliance of the Venetian maestro.

Vivaldi’s Gloria in D (RV 589) is the best known of his settings of the joyful hymn of praise Gloria in excelsis Deo. Written during the period of Vivaldi’s employment at the Pietà, the theatrical Gloria’s twelve brief movements combine drama and tenderness in equal measure.

The Magnificat in B flat attributed to Pergolesi is among the most familiar pieces of eighteenth century Italian sacred music. This charming work of simple beauty is now widely accepted as being the work of Francesco Durante, the renowned Neapolitan composer who was Pergolesi’s teacher.

Jan Dismas Zelenka was an eighteenth century Bohemian composer employed at the court at Dresden, whose work was admired by his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach. Zelenka completed his Litaniae de Venerabile Sacramento in C Major (ZWV 147) in 1727. Scored for mixed choir, solo voices and small orchestra, this masterly setting of a less familiar liturgical text is all too rarely performed today.