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Fauré’s Requiem – Solace and Sustenance

BBC Singers

An image of Sofi Jeannin conducting, with BBC Singers branding around her

Choral music spanning six centuries reflects on sorrow, darkness and grief – and the consoling light that glows deep within us all.

Human voices offer a warm embrace in times of sorrow. Parisian organist Gabriel Fauré wrote his Mass for the Dead in the late 1880s, promising to deliver ‘something different’. His supremely beautiful and enduringly popular Requiem appears to float in its own time and space, with music that radiates reassurance, its clear lines and gentle accompaniments the work of a master craftsman who never wasted a note.

Reena Esmail’s 2020 piece When The Violin uses Thomás Luis de Victoria’s 16th-century motet O Vos Omnes as the focal point. The result is a work that ‘moves through darkness and begins to let those very first slivers of light in’. Sacred music by J S Bach and his pioneering Italian contemporary Isabella Leonarda complete a concert from the BBC Singers and their Chief Conductor offering solace, inspiration and perfection.

This performance will end at approximately 9.30pm, including a 20 minute interval.

Produced by the BBC Singers

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Milton Court Concert Hall