Our debut at Cartmel Priory – a magnificent setting for two large-scale choral works – marks Fauré’s centenary year, with his Requiem, perhaps the most consoling Requiem of all time. The Garden of Proserpine, completed in 1899 was Vaughan Williams’ first major large-scale work, and yet it did not receive its premiere until 2011, some 112 years later! As the late Michael Kennedy wrote ‘Anyone hearing this beautiful work for the first time must be mystified as I am that its composer should have abandoned it without, apparently, making any effort to have it performed’. The music, dominated by a memorable adagio theme introduced in the ninth bar, is a rich and revealing setting of a celebrated Pre-Raphaelite poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

We also mark the centenary of Anglo-Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford’s death with his Fantasia and Toccata, which opens tonight’s concert. Stanford was a highly respected composer, conductor and teacher (he was a founder of the Royal College of Music), and Ralph Vaughan William, like many notable composers of the time, came under his tutelage. Vaughan Williams, whilst guided by his mentor, carved out a unique style in the history of British music, evident in the Five Mystical Songs, of which we will hear three tonight, ending with “Antiphon” a triumphant hymn of praise, sometimes performed, as a church anthem for choir and organ: “Let all the world in every corner sing”.

Ulverston Festival Chorus
Clare Eccles, soprano
Patrick Osborne, bass baritone
Ian Hare, organist

Stanford Fantasia & Toccata
Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs excerpts
Vaughan Williams The Garden of Proserpine
Fauré Requiem in D minor, Op.48