Revelations - Londinium (chamber choir)

Londinium’s dazzlingly diverse and richly textured programme of sacred choral music explores the power of mystical religious texts, many of them from the Book of Revelation, as inspiration for some extraordinary musical settings, from the 12th century to the present. Ranging from the ethereal chant of 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen to the visionary music of the late Jonathan Harvey, the concert features a highly original selection of the old and the new, including Peter Philips’ Ecce vicit leo, Stravinsky’s The Dove Descending Breaks the Air, Messiaen’s O Sacrum Convivium, William Byrd’s O Quam Gloriosum, and Harvey’s The Angels and Come Holy Ghost. The luscious, Messiaen-tinged Hildegard Triptych by contemporary American composer Frank Ferko is performed alongside Hildegard’s own O Virtus sapientiae. And running as a counterpoint throughout the programme are extracts from the Prophetiae Sibyllarum: remarkable, chromatic 16th-century settings by Lassus of the prophecies of the Greek Sibyls. The dream-like poetry of revelation – winged figures, prophetic visions, glimpses of the Divine – emerges from this concert of fascinating musical revelations, which concludes with James MacMillan’s Alpha and Omega (2011): the beginning and the end, both celebratory and apocalyptic.