The London Mozart Players, Brighton Festival Chorus and Brighton Festival Youth Choir join forces to present a concert of beautiful, calming, meditative works by female composers followed by Puccini’s rousing, operatic Messa di Gloria.
The first half of the programme showcases the work of five female composers, beginning with Clara Schumann’s only set of choral songs, Drei gemischte Chöre with texts by the popular German poet Emanuel Geibel.
Kerensa Briggs’s atmospheric Media Vita was written in 2015 to celebrate 500 years since the birth of the English Renaissance composer John Sheppard.
Ukrainian composer Natalia Tsupryk’s A Quiet Night sets text by renowned Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan and quotations from President Volodymyr Zelensky in the form of a moving musical expression of solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
Quintessentially English, and featuring a beautiful cello solo and luscious pizzicato and arco lines, Libby Croad’s Suite for String Orchestra was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 for International Women’s Day in 2018.
Mia Makaroff’s close harmonies have become a firm favourite of Brighton Festival Youth Choir in recent years, and for this concert they are pleased to present Andromeda, a hauntingly beautiful piece composed in 2010 and first recorded by The King’s Singers which tells of the fate of the eponymous Greek princess.
The concert concludes with Puccini’s uplifting Messa di Gloria. Written early in his life as a farewell to his association with sacred music, the mass is operatic in style and described as “full of colour, vitality and musical surprises”.