A veritable banquet of the Bard as the finale to Summer Music in City Churches 2019: Words and Music in this most special venue, Shakespeare's local church. In 1842, Felix Mendelssohn wrote the ravishing incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is here narrated by the multi-faceted actor Tama Matheson, whom we also hear in Walton’s Henry V Suite. Finzi’s lovely but little-heard Love’s Labours Lost and Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music complete the programme. Vaughan Williams adapts text from The Merchant of Venice; fans of his composition The Lark Ascending will rejoice in his scoring, in particular the solo violin, but here with the added power of chorus, soloists and profoundly beautiful words:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Summer Music in City Churches is a fledgling festival, founded in 2018, presenting beautiful music to inspire, divert and engage, in ancient and architecturally stunning churches in London's Square Mile. Standing cheek by jowl with City offices, these churches are glorious settings in which to listen and reflect: oases of history, beauty and peace amidst the 24-7 hurly-burly of City life.
The theme for the second festival in June 2019 is Words and Music. During a week and a half of events, you will find sumptuous settings of poetry, lyrical music inspired by poetry, plays and literature, words that illuminate music with biographical insight and context, music of significance to literary heroes and heroines, and more: a lyrical celebration.