Come to the historic and intimate church of St Peter’s Church, Petersham, in the early evening of Passion Sunday and enjoy an interlude of stillness, meditation or prayer, as we perform some of the great Passiontide music of the renaissance and baroque periods. There will be one-to-a-part choral singing and solo works, both a cappella and accompanied by strings and the beautiful St Martin organ. We invite you to stay for refreshments at the end of the concert.
Members of the Petersham Consort, directed by Ben Driver, will peform sublime sacred music on the theme of Passiontide, by three great European composers from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. We begin with Italian Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594), whose beautiful motet O Crux Ave is the fourth verse of the Latin Hymn Vexilla Regis, traditionally sung on Good Friday of Holy Week. We continue with three famous Funeral Sentence anthems by England's greatest composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695), written, shortly before his own death, for Queen Mary. Our final European great is Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), another of Italy's finest composers. Stabat Mater, is his best-known devotional work, features a series of duets accompanied by strings and continuo. Commissioned by the Confraternita dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo, which presented an annual Good Friday meditation in honour of the Virgin Mary, Stabat Mater is classical in scope, demonstrating Pergolesi's mastery of the Italian baroque durezze e ligature style. The work remained popular after Pergolesi's all too brief life, becoming the most frequently printed musical work of the 18th century.