Dorchester Choral Society perform a concert of dramatic music

Samuel West, the film and TV actor/director son of Timothy West and Prunella Scales, will be joining Dorchester Choral Society to perform a programme that features two works that need a narrator: William Walton’s Façade and Arthur Honegger’s King David. Sam has made quite a speciality of working with musicians – he has appeared in the Proms six times and has frequently performed Façade which is well known to British audiences. But he has never performed the Swiss composer’s less well known 'dramatic psalm' before.

Dorchester Choral Society’s Musical Director Colin Howard explains “The two pieces were ground breaking in their time and are very dramatic. Façade features nonsense poems by Edith Sitwell spoken over the music. In King David the narration punctuates the singing. Both require the narrator to time the spoken word very precisely with the music – no mean feat. We are incredibly fortunate to have secured an actor of Sam’s quality to work with us in what promises to be a really memorable performance.”

The programme is being rounded off by two short popular pieces of choral music: Gabriel Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine and Morten Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium (both in Classic FM’s 2018 Hall of Fame).