Music for Midsummer

 

 

Music for Midsummer: a programme in two halves, celebrating first of all the joyous long hours of sunlight.

 

Rautavaara’s Sommarnatten paints scenes of Swedish folk dances late into the night, while Britten contributes flowers to the occasion.

 

The heat of the summer night then transports our imaginations to southern Andalusia, with a suite composed on poems by Federico García Lorca. The warm harmonies of Sven-David Sandström’s Four Songs of Love are finally complemented by a lush Mendelssohn motet before the interval.

 

Clara Schumann begins the second half of lighter music which brings us from Romanticism through to the 20th-century with choral arrangements of Cole Porter, Freddy Mercury, and Gene Puerling.

 

 

Sommarnatten Einojuhani Rautavaara

 

Five Flower Songs Benjamin Britten

“Suite” de Lorca Einojuhani Rautavaara

Four Songs of Love Sven-David Sandström

Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen Felix Mendelssohn

INTERVAL

Drei gemischte Chöre Clara Schumann

Miss Otis Regrets Cole Porter arr. Terry

People will say we’re in love Rogers & Hammerstein arr. Moore

L’amour de moi Trad arr. Ward Swingle

Seaside Rendezvous Freddie Mercury arr. Hart

London by Night Carroll Coates arr. Puerling