Zoltán Kodály was born in 1882. Brought up in the Hungarian countryside, many of his compositions draw on the folk music he heard during childhood. This is exemplified in his lyrical Missa Brevis written when sheltering in the basement of the Budapest Opera House during non-stop bombing of the crty in 1945 by warring Nazis and Soviets. Tonight marks the 70th anniversary of its unlikely first performance in the Opera House cloakroom. Its official premiere was at the 1948 Three Choirs Festival in Worcester.
A revision of his purely instrumental Organ Mass of 1942 and dedicated to his wife, Kodály's Missa Brevis is written for mixed chorus and organ with the regular parts of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei) framed by an introductory Introitus and postlude - Ite, missa est - for solo organ. We welcome back Malcolm Riley as accompanist for the Mass and Elgar anthems, and as soloist in a varied selection of organ works including Karg-Elert's magnificent Nun danket alle Gott and Elgar's The tame bear.
Of Edward Elgar's three anthems featured tonight, two are stand-alone compositions, and the third, The spirit of the Lord, the intensely moving opening chorus from his 1903 oratorio, The Apostles. Completed in 1912, Great is the Lord was dedicated "with sincere regard" to the Very Reverend J. Armitage Robinson, Dean of Wells. This stirring account of Psalm 48 was first performed in Westminster Abbey.
Elgar's dramatic setting of Psalm 39 in Give unto the Lord was first heard at the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy in St Paul's Cathedral on 30 April 1914. With the outbreak of World War I just three months hence, the passage "....yea, the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness, and strippeth the forests bare" eerily presages the horrors to come.