CLASSICAL AND JAZZ: Preview - Camden Chamber Choir at St Mary-the-Virgin, Primrose Hill on June 16
Published: 14 June, 2012
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
The wind, showers and downpours of an English summer feature in the Camden Chamber Choir’s highly topical summer concert Torrents in Summer being given on Saturday evening at St Mary-the-Virgin, Primrose Hill.
Purportedly, the concert is seeking to celebrate English Romantic song in summertime.
To do so this summer, the choir may need to demonstrate the art of singing romantically about the rain, if not singing in the rain Elgar's part-songs about dismal summer weather are among pieces being sung on Saturday.
Particularly apt is his composition The Shower set to words by 17th century poet Henry Vaughan:
Cloud, if as thou dost melt, and with thy train
Of drops make soft the Earth, my eyes could weep
O’er my hard heart, that’s bound up and asleep;
Perhaps at last,
Some such showers past,
My God would give a sunshine after rain.
There’s lots more Elgar in the concert together with several pieces by Parry and arrangements of traditional English songs by Barbar Honeybill.
The mutability of the heart and the seasons are also being celebrated at the concert by outstanding soprano Lesley-Jane Rogers in a varied programme of works by Quilter, Warlock, Howells and Elgar.
Peter Lea-Cox conducts.