Viva La Musica

A celebration of music itself, and particularly music that charts the turning of the seasons. We start in Europe with a trio of Hungarians: Iván Erőd: Viva la musica; Zoltán Kodály: Esti dal; and Lajos Bárdos: Cantemus! Two favourites from Elgar follow: the third of his Op.18 choral songs, My Love Dwelt In A Northern Land, and his early Spanish Serenade Op.23, also known as Stars of the Summer Night. The first half closes with Malcolm Arnold's John Clare Cantata.
In the second half we have three arrangements of traditional American folksongs, two by Rutter (Sourwood Mountain and Black Sheep), and one from Mack Wilberg: Shenandoah. The focus then shifts from seasonal to wackadoodle tomfoolery in serious musical disguise as only Richard Rodney Bennett can deliver, via his Nonsense settings of Mervyn Peake's very silly poems for his nieces and nephews!

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Host or Publisher The William Byrd Singers