Music for a Time of Penitence | Jubilate Chamber Choir, Oxford

This Lenten programme focuses on music from the mid-twentieth century, full of passion and expressive power.

Poulenc’s four motets are poised, intense, and chilly. Leighton’s multi-movement work Crucifixus pro nobis is angular and austerely beautiful, concluding with the mesmeric Drop, slow tears. In the second half, the German composer Rudolf Mauersberger uses the Biblical destruction of Jerusalem as a way to explore his grief over the bombing of Dresden. This all leads up to the extraordinary Amore langueo, by British composer Howard Ferguson.