Join us in Queens’ College’s beautiful chapel for a programme of spell-binding and rarely-performed works by Gustav and Imogen Holst for high voices, harp and chamber strings.
Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav, described the very beginnings of her musical education as dancing around their family home in Cheltenham while her father played the piano. Her Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow, set to words by Keats, opens the programme with spritely melodies dancing between the harp and voices which beautifully and playfully bring Keats’ poetry to life.
Next is Gustav Holst’s third group from Choral Hymns of the Rig Veda and Two Eastern Pictures. Gustav was fascinated by ancient Sanskrit texts. So much that, unsatisfied with existing translations, he enrolled at University College London and painstakingly made his own.
The programme concludes with Gustav’s Seven Part-Songs, set to words by Robert Bridges and accompanied by strings. This work evokes a world of folk tales and fairy tales, with moments of the delightful, the weird and of sublime beauty.
In recognition of the immense contribution to English music by Queens’ alumnus, the late Richard Hickox, this inaugural concert of the Hickox Ensemble directed by Eleanor Medcalf is in collaboration with St Margaret’s Society of Queens’ College Cambridge.
The Hickox Consort will perform 7:00pm on the 30th January 2020.
MagSoc 