Saint-Saëns’s Requiem and Britten: short choral works | Voxcetera

Chamber choir Voxcetera returns to St Michael’s, Highgate, for a concert of contrasts. Camille Saint-Saëns’s Requiem is preceded by four pieces by Benjamin Britten.

Saint-Saëns’s beautiful Requiem (1878) moves from quiet simplicity to unearthly fortissimi and at moments anticipate's Fauré's better known requiem which came a decade later. It was originally scored for a vast orchestra; our performance will maintain Saint-Saëns’s heightened expression and heartfelt sincerity, but with the tender intimacy of chamber music, with an accompaniment of harp, strings and organ (arranged by Klaus Rothaupt), and the material for solo voices shared between a soprano and a double choir. Our guest soprano is recitalist (and cabaret star) Angela Henckel, pictured, who has appeared with notable ensembles all over the world, and in UK venues including the Wigmore Hall, as well as on BBC Radio 3.

Britten's extraordinary cantata Rejoice in the Lamb is by turns as fervent and eerily beautiful as the religious poems by Christopher Smart from which Britten took the text. Other short works on the menu are his joyful Jubilate Deo, the dramatic Missa Brevis in D, and the Festival Te Deum which sets ethereal Gregorian chant against a progression of shifting organ chords.

A bar will be open before the concert and during the interval.