Come, listen to us!
Summer Concert – 1st July 2022
‘Mozart Requiem & Madrigals’ is the title of our Summer Concert this year. We will perform a selection of English Madrigals from Shakespeare’s time along with one of the most famous choral works in the classical repertoire, Mozart’s Requiem.
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of this style of music in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627. The madrigals were predominately light or pastoral in style and were popular because they were considered fun, despite the fact that the lyrics often express an intense melancholy, as in John Dowland’s “Come Heavy Sleep” or John Bennet’s “Weep, O mine eyes”, as well as painful feelings of love and desire as in “Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone” by John Farmer or Thomas Ford’s “Since First I saw your Face”.
Mozart’s Requiem has a timeless appeal to singers, musicians and an audience alike. It is full of emotion and feeling within the magnificence and dynamism of the music, from the powerful “Rex Tremendae” and the mournful “Lacrimosa,” to the energetic fugue that finishes with “Cum Sanctis.”
Yet the piece remains shrouded in mystery as Mozart was not in the best of health when it was commissioned and died before it was finished. It is impossible to know which of the numerous accounts of who finished it are correct. The version we will sing, which is generally recognised as standard, is the work of Franz Xaver Süßmayr, who assisted Mozart in the final months of his life.
Conducted by Sanda Audere, the choir is joined by soloists Bethany Shepherd (soprano), Tim Braithwaite (alto), Stefan Kennedy (tenor) and Jonty Coy (bass), accompanied by organist Bert Mooiman and a Viol Consort led by Alex Baker.
The concert will be held at the historic Lutherse Kerk, Lutherse Burgwal 7, 2512 CB Den Haag, starting at 20:00
For tickets, please go to www.ticketkantoor.nl/shop/cecilia-2022
Past performances
Our last Christmas concerts, The Road Home, took place in December 2019 at the same locations as the planned concerts for 2021. After the Covid-induced stop on most of our activities and all concerts, we are very happy to be able to rehearse for our next concerts again.
Our last Summer Concert, Through Darkness to Light, took place on Saturday, June 29th 2019, 20:00, at the Nieuwe Badkapel, Nieuwe Parklaan 90, Scheveningen.
In the near future, some sample recordings of the concert will be included on the Recordings page.
For this moment, please find below a picture of the choir and our conductor, just before the concert. Thank you, Hans van Bemmelen.
Recordings of fragments from some performances may be downloaded by clicking the Recordings page.
A selection of posters from recent years is set out below, all the artwork was done by Colin Reeves.
Just click on the image for an enlargement.
