麻豆社

Live from St Paul's, Knightsbridge
Presented by Petroc Trelawny

The 麻豆社 Singers, Kaspars Putnins and Scott Dickinson perform music on the theme of sun, sea and summer nights.

Judith Weir: a blue true dream of sky
Ton de Leeuw: Car nos vignes sont en fleur
Peteris Vasks: Vasara ('Summer')
Benjamin Britten: Elegy
Bob Chilcott: Beach

8.15pm: Interval: Kaspars Putnins talks about the choral scene in the Baltic States, with music from 'Summer', from 'The Four Seasons' by Giovanni Guido (1675-1728)

8.35pm:
Cecilia McDowall: Night flight
Brahms: Ich schwing mein Horn (Op.41 no 1)
Schumann: Die Lotosblume (Op.33 no 3)
Paul Patterson: Tides of Mananan
Olli Kortekangas: Valimeri ('Mediterranean Sea')

Scott Dickinson (viola)
麻豆社 Singers
Kaspars Putnins (conductor)

In holiday mood, the 麻豆社 Singers - directed by the Latvian choral conductor Kaspars Putnins and joined by the viola-player Scott Dickinson - perform a programme on the theme of sun, sea and summer nights. The music includes a choral portrait of the Mediterranean by the Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas, and a Manx sea-scape, for solo viola, by Paul Patterson. Bob Chilcott's 'Beach' is a poignant reminiscence of childhood days at the seaside - like Britten's 'Elegy': the 16-year-old composer commemorating his final summer term at school in Lowestoft. Also in the concert, summer partsongs by Brahms and Schumann, and the Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw's setting of words from the Song of Solomon which depict vines in bloom and love in the air. And, completing the programme, Cecilia McDowall's musical portrayal of a historic night spent not on the ground but soaring above it - the evening in 1912 when Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly a plane across the English Channel.

(Producer, Michael Emery).