FAURÉ Requiem & VAUGHAN WILLIAMS A Sea Symphony
Monday 6 July, 7.30pm | Barbican, London
A perfect summer evening, featuring two of the loveliest choral works in the repertoire.
Gabriel Fauré’s popular and beautiful Requiem (written 1887-1890) was begun shortly after the death of his father. Whether this was influential is open to debate: Fauré later said it was “composed for nothing … for fun”. Of its Pie Jesu movement, Saint-Saëns said “just as Mozart’s is the only Ave Verum Corpus, this is the only Pie Jesu”.
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s music is thought of as quintessentially English, although in A Sea Symphony (written 1903-1909) you can hear the influence of his younger mentor, Maurice Ravel. These settings of poems by Walt Whitman established the young Vaughan Williams as a major composer. The sea inspired several works of the time (others include Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Stanford’s Songs of the Sea) and they reflect the ocean’s expansiveness and mystery, its changing moods and its importance to us as an island nation.
Booking and information
Monday 6 July, 7.30pm,
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
TICKETS: £24 – £9.50
Half price for age 18 & under
20% discount for CEFC Friends, Crouch End Card holders and Barbican Card holders
Box office 020 7638 8891 Barbican online booking