The Hallé Orchestra, Sophie Bevan, Jennifer Johnston (1), Mark Padmore, Matthew Brook, Halle Choir

A programme of

Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man
Britten - Sinfonia da Requiem
Tippett - A Child of Our Time

Conductor
Ryan Wigglesworth

Tippett’s choral masterpiece A Child of Our Time was written at the beginning of the Second World War as a protest against ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. Modelled on Handel’s Messiah and the Passions of J.S. Bach, its emotional essence lies in five spirituals Tippett incorporated into the score in which the suffering of oppressed people throughout history is given universal resonance.

Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem dates from the same troubled period as the Tippett and is also an intensely humanistic piece. In the work Britten expresses anger and despair at the cataclysm beginning to engulf the world. As a precursor to both, the concert opens with Copland’s great tribute to his fellow Americans, a piece also written during the same conflict.