Spring concert
SHETLAND Choral Society is performing its spring concert at St Columba’s Church, in Lerwick later this month, featuring three composers whose names begin with the letter ‘H’.
Conductor Peter Davis said: “The music on the programme begins and ends in the late eighteenth-and early nineteenth century with religious pieces by Haydn and Hummel.
“Both worked at the Esterházy palace in Eisenstadt, Austria, as court composers.
“We are also singing two choral pieces by Holst from a completely different sound world in the early twentieth century.”
The concert opens with Haydn’s motet Insanae et vanae curae, a piece of vivid choral writing in contrasting sections of turbulence and calm.
The two Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda by Gustav Holst are settings of Sanskrit translated by Holst himself and inhabit the sound world of The Planets which Holst was just about to compose.
The main work is a setting of the Mass in B flat by Hummel first performed in 1805.
Hummel was a pupil of Mozart and contemporary and a rival of Beethoven and respected as a composer and virtuoso pianist throughout Europe.
The concert takes place on Friday 13 May at 7.30pm. Tickets are priced at £8/£6 and are available online via the Shetland Box Office, telephone 01595 745 555, or at the doo on the night.
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