Oxford Harmonic Choir: Mendelssohn's Elijah

For our spring concert, we will perform a huge favourite with audiences and singers alike: Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah. First performed in Birmingham Town Hall in 1846, it contains some of the composer’s greatest music, with magnificent choruses, beautiful arias and imaginative orchestration. The story from the Old Testament, containing many natural phenomena – drought, fire, rain, and earthquake – offers much scope for expressive writing, and the work combines many moments of high drama with more lyrical passages of the kind normally associated with the composer. Together with Handel’s Messiah and Haydn’s Creation, Elijah forms a trio of the most popular oratorios in the choral repertoire.