THE FIRST NOWELL
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Performers
- Claire Filer
- soprano
- Gareth Brynmor John
- baritone
- Daniel Hyde
- conductor
- Britten Sinfonia
Programme
- Gerald Finzi
- Magnificat
- Florence Price
- Adoration
- Gerald Finzi
- In Terra Pax
- Benjamin Britten
- Ceremony of Carols (SATB version)
- Ralph Vaughan Williams
- The First Nowell
Britten Sinfonia joins the City of London Choir for it first Christmas concert under the baton of Daniel Hyde.
A gorgeous and unusual anthology of music heralding the festive season, including Britten’s much-loved Ceremony of Carols in an arrangement for mixed voices. Interspersed with Adoration, a beautiful miniature for strings by Florence Price, two enchanting works by Gerald Finzi set scenes of wonder. Magnificat is Mary’s joyful song on discovering she is to have a baby; In Terra Pax imagines shepherds receiving astonishing news of the Nativity from exultant angels above a frosty Gloucestershire hillside. From Annunciation to Epiphany, the whole Christmas story is encapsulated in Vaughan Williams’ The First Nowell, a sequence of Christmas music for choir and orchestra. Rarely performed, it is laced with well-known carols, and speaks directly to the heart with warmth and freshness.
