The glorious blending of voices with harp is explored in Thame Chamber Choir’s next concert on Saturday 4th March. Joined by leading international tenor - and former Thame resident - Benjamin Hulett (Royal Opera House, Berlin Philharmonic) the musicians will combine diverse repertoire by Elgar, Debussy, Janáček, and Holst. Although all composed within a few years of each other towards the beginning of the twentieth century, the sophisticated and subtle Parisian harmony of Debussy’s Trois chansons de Charles d’Orleans provides a significant contrast with Elgar’s stirring propaganda piece For the fallen; from the evocative devotional soundworld of Janacek’s Otcenas (Our Father), where the stirring cries of “Give us this day our daily bread” are powerfully rooted in genuine hunger, to the mystical musings of the Rig Veda Sanskrit texts as set by Holst.
The concert will also include perennial favourite “Panis Angelicus” (Cesar Franck) in its original and rarely-heard scoring for organ and harp with tenor.
Thame Chamber Choir (directed by Duncan Aspden)
Benjamin Hulett (tenor)
with Vicky Lester (harp: RPO, RSNO)
Anna Markland (piano)
and Timothy Wakerell (organ: St Paul’s Cathedral, New College Oxford)
