"You want peace: create love" (Victor Hugo)
Numbered seating.
The stage of the Centre de Congrès welcomes some one hundred and twenty musicians in two choirs and an orchestra, joined by organist Véronique Le Guen, soprano Liza Fontanille and baritone Ronan Debois. All this beauty is here to grant us peace, a phrase taken from the Agnus Dei, the prayer of the Latin Catholic Mass, and from a work by British composer Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Williams wrote Dona Nobis Pacem in 1936, just as the Second World War was getting underway, having served in the Royal Army Medical Corps at the age of 41! This cantata, inspired by the Bible, political speeches and three poems by the great Walt Whitman, penetrates body and soul.
We stay on the other side of the Channel with trumpeter, conductor and composer Malcolm Arnold, who won an Oscar in 1957 for his music to the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. The featured work is his Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, a three-movement score written in 1954 for three trumpets, timpani and strings. Sir Malcolm Arnold's style combines simplicity and depth, as in the second movement, which features only organ and muted strings.
Program :
Overture to Mendelssohn's oratorio St Paul, arr. for organ by William Thomas Best (1871)
Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem for choir, organ and orchestra (1936)
Concerto for organ and orchestra by Malcolm Arnold (1954)
Partnership: Ville d'Angers, CRR d'Angers
Véronique Le Guen, organ
Liza Fontanille, soprano
Ronan Debois, baritone
Angers CRR symphony orchestra and choir
Alexandre Herviant, Choirmaster
Bruno Chiron, Conductor
Numbered seating.
The stage of the Centre de Congrès welcomes some one hundred and twenty musicians in two choirs and an orchestra, joined by organist Véronique Le Guen, soprano Liza Fontanille and baritone Ronan Debois. All this beauty is here to grant us peace, a phrase taken from the Agnus Dei, the prayer of the Latin Catholic Mass, and from a work by British composer Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Williams wrote Dona Nobis Pacem in 1936, just as the Second World War was getting underway, having served in the Royal Army Medical Corps at the age of 41! This cantata, inspired by the Bible, political speeches and three poems by the great Walt Whitman, penetrates body and soul.
We stay on the other side of the Channel with trumpeter, conductor and composer Malcolm Arnold, who won an Oscar in 1957 for his music to the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. The featured work is his Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, a three-movement score written in 1954 for three trumpets, timpani and strings. Sir Malcolm Arnold's style combines simplicity and depth, as in the second movement, which features only organ and muted strings.
Program :
Overture to Mendelssohn's oratorio St Paul, arr. for organ by William Thomas Best (1871)
Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem for choir, organ and orchestra (1936)
Concerto for organ and orchestra by Malcolm Arnold (1954)
Partnership: Ville d'Angers, CRR d'Angers
Véronique Le Guen, organ
Liza Fontanille, soprano
Ronan Debois, baritone
Angers CRR symphony orchestra and choir
Alexandre Herviant, Choirmaster
Bruno Chiron, Conductor
