Harmonic Chorale In Today’s Recital

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31111, 14 July 1966, Page 8

Harmonic Chorale In Today’s Recital

The lunch-hour concert In the University Hall at' 1.10 p.m. today will be given by the Chorale of the Christchurch Harmonic Society. Three contemporary composers Britten, Stravinsky and Joubert, will be represented in the four works to be performed. Britten’s opera “Gloriana,” composed tar the coronation of Elizabeth H in 1953 to a libretto by William Homer is perhaps his most neglected work, but the six unaccompanied Choral Dances hold a firm place in the repertoire. The Chorale included Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia in its repertoire when it performed at the Commonwealth Festival of the Arts held in England last year, and at the JuUßard School of Music in New York. This work is probably Britten’s finest piece of unaccompanied choral writing, set in an almost symphonic form. One of Stravinsky’s most recent compositions is the short unaccompanied wedding anthem, "The dove descend-

ing breaks the air,” written in 1962. The words, from T. S. Eliot's “Little Gidding” takes up once more the theme of divine love as a “consuming fire,” the same idea that he had used in his "A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer.” The anthem is written in 1240ne style, but unlike so much of this music, this work retains a comparative simplicity of rhythmic structure which is more befitting the text The final work on the programme is “The Holy Mountain” by John Joubert. This piece, for chorus and two pianos was first performed at the University of Birmingham last year and takes its text from the famous prophetic passage beginning “and there shall come forth a rod out of the mouth of Jesse” from the prophecy of Isaiah. “The Holy Mountain" is the work of a fastidious craftsman, willing to let the words take precedence over the music, with the two accompanying pianos adding a decorative and pictorial rele. The pianos will be played by Nan Anderson and Jeanette Hickford, William R. IJawkey will be the conductor.