A Handful of Singers - The Road Home

On the eve of Advent, A Handful of Singers’ winter concert is a programme of exquisite music based on the theme of pilgrimage, and the first with new director Tomos Watkins. For his inaugural programme, Tomos demonstrates a deft interweaving of the sacred and profane bound together with themes of searching and belonging, light and darkness.

Works by three German giants of the romantic period: Mendelssohn’s beautiful and pleading Psalm 43, Brahms’s powerful motet Warum ist das Licht gegeben and Rheinberger’s Abendlied are interspersed with repertoire by four 20th century American composers: the pilgrimage wends its way through the wistful secular song of Elliot Carter’s Heart not so heavy as mine and Stephen Paulus’s The road home.

The sound world of Samuel Barber’s well known Sure on this shining night is complemented by the briefest of song thoughts Heaven-Haven and the touching The monk and his cat. The programme concludes with Randall Thompson’s epic suite Frostiana.