Three Choirs Festival: Venables’s Requiem

Programme

Ian Venables’s Requiem is entrancing and mysterious, full of melodies which bring the feelings behind the words to life. It was written to comfort the living as well as remember the dead. This shines through the music, which has timeless echoes of Howells and Vaughan Williams.

The Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir also sings Cecilia McDowall’s Shipping Forecast, a work reflecting the majesty and force of the sea in its setting of poetry and psalm, particularly poignant as the shipping forecast celebrates 100 years since its first broadcast.

In Stanford’s anniversary year, the Sonata for String Orchestra is Jeremy Dibble’s new arrangement of five movements from Stanford’s string quartets.