鶹 Singers
17 Jun 2024, Snape Maltings Concert Hall
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鶹 Singers 2023-24 Aldeburgh Festival: 鶹 Singers and Castalian String Quartet

Aldeburgh Festival: Aldeburgh Festival: 鶹 Singers and Castalian String Quartet
Aldeburgh Festival: 鶹 Singers and Castalian String Quartet
19:30 Mon 17 Jun 2024 Snape Maltings Concert Hall
Judith Weir’s beautiful oratorio charts the changing seasons of the year, and is perfectly complemented by Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet and Messiaen’s Cinq Rechants – a unique masterpiece of 20th-century music. With 鶹 Singers and Castalian String Quartet.
Judith Weir’s beautiful oratorio charts the changing seasons of the year, and is perfectly complemented by Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet and Messiaen’s Cinq Rechants – a unique masterpiece of 20th-century music. With 鶹 Singers and Castalian String Quartet.

Programme

About This Event

This programme flows from Judith Weir’s longstanding relationship with the outstanding vocal ensemble the 鶹 Singers. She describes her “blue hills beyond blue hills” as “setting to music around 55 brief poems by the Scottish poet Alan Spence, mostly haiku, with occasional tanka (another, slightly longer, Japanese form). I have also included a couple of quotations from the historical Japanese poets Issa and Basho”. The poems “follow the progress of a year, and portray the passing of time through small changes in nature and everyday life. I have selected poems from these collections to create a five-movement cycle which approximately follows the seasons, starting with spring, through summer, autumn, winter and ending with a hymn to the New Year”. It is a work of supreme beauty and grace.

It is performed alongside Judith’s own choice of Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet, played by the exceptional Castalian Quartet. Its magical opening evokes the dawn of a new day.

The concert is completed by another major Messiaen work, the Cinq Rechants.