©Ensemble Pro Victoria
©Ensemble Pro Victoria
Fiona Fraser soprano, Maddy Morris soprano, Elisabeth Paul mezzo-soprano, James Micklethwaite tenor, Daniel Tate baritone, Piers Connor Kennedy bass, Toby Ward director
Programme to include:
Tomás Luis de Victoria: Requiem 1605 (Officium Defunctorum)
Cristóbal de Morales: Circumdederunt me
Simon Beattie: A Remembrance
Ronald Perrin: It is Finished
HC Stewart: The Lilies of the Field
PC Kennedy: The Ending of the Day
Douglas Guest: For the Fallen
Programme Notes and Sung Texts (also available free at concert)
Almost a month before the annual commemoration itself, Ensemble Pro Victoria present a programme of choral music on the theme of Remembrance. This will include a sequence of pieces spanning several centuries up to the present day, including music by a contemporary of Victoria and recent commissions by the Ensemble itself. The sequence will encompass music of sorrow and consolation, of memory, reflection and even joy. Music will include the profoundly moving Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria, the pre-eminent composer of the Renaissance in Spain.
The Requiem was first published in 1605 having been written for the funeral in 1603 of the Dowager Empress Maria, daughter of the Emperor Charles V and sister of King Philip II of Spain. Maria had been living in monastic retreat for over 20 years before her death and Victoria had been her chaplain (and Director of Music) for most of that time. For this performance, Ensemble Pro Victoria have returned to the original notation to help shape their interpretation in the way Victoria might have expected as an expression of his own deeply-held faith.
Rarely performed until comparatively recent years, Victoria’s Requiem is now recognized as one of the crowning masterpieces of goldenage Spanish music and our ancient church should provide a perfect intimate environment for this most human of settings – “For many, it represents what Renaissance polyphony is, what it sounds and feels like, and how expressive it can be.” Greg Skidmore
Ensemble Pro Victoria (“one of Britain’s finest young vocal ensembles” Early Music Review) was founded in Cambridge in 2015 by Humphrey Thompson and Toby Ward for the performance of early music. A flexible ensemble of singers, the group focuses on Iberian polyphony, pre-Reformation Tudor music and the early Baroque, with particular emphasis on maintaining and researching the practice of choirbook performance.
Joint winners of the London International Festival of Early Music Young Ensemble Competition in 2020, EPV have built a reputation for energetic performances of thoroughly researched programmes and have gone on to record two CDs – the first, which celebrates Robert Fayrfax, gaining 5-star reviews.
See Ensemble Pro Victoria perform the Victoria Requiem on this Facebook link.
“Vigorous and compelling, here are healthy, visceral voices of technical superiority, accuracy, ensemble and intonation in recorded sound of burnished luminosity.” Choir and Organ Magazine
Sat 12 Oct 2024 8.00pm
Little Missenden Church
£28, £20, £11
Online booking is managed by TicketSource. This event may be booked from the Tickets link on this page but, when booking for multiple events, it may be more convenient to use our Little Missenden Festival page on TicketSource.