Town and Country: a choral celebration | Londinium (chamber choir)

Inspired by Richard Rodney Bennett's Town and Country, chamber choir Londinium's spring programme explores the age-old pull between urban and rural life. We experience the lure of the city in music about Venice (Andrea Gabrieli and Judith Bingham), Paris (Lassus), and - above all - London, whether seen resplendent from the water (Arthur Bliss's River Music), wreathed in a Dickensian pea-souper (Geoffrey Bush's Fog), or viewed as a den of vice (Leighton's London Town). Meanwhile Thea Musgrave's On The Underground, Set 3 paints an evocative picture of a simpler rural existence, and Thomas Tomkins urges us to escape to the country, which we celebrate in delicious folk-song arrangements by Vaughan Williams and Bairstow, and with Britten's vivacious, colourful Five Flower Songs.