Royal Free Singers, Orchestra Of London

Having already performed his three great oratorios, The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles and The Kingdom, the Royal Free Singers’ next concert includes two of Elgar’s lesser known but equally memorable choral works.

The concert opens with an early work, the Serenade for Strings in E minor (opus 20), followed by The Spirit of England (opus 80), a setting of poems by Laurence Binyon, written following the outbreak of war in 1914. Composed between 1915 and 1917, it is his finest wartime music and is both grand and melancholy.

The second half will be a performance of his romantic choral piece The Music Makers (opus 69). It begins with the evocative lines “We are the Music Makers and we are the dreamers of dreams”. The music is full of quotations from his earlier works including The Dream of Gerontius, Sea Pictures and The Enigma Variations. It is like a mini autobiography, reflecting events and feelings from various periods of his life.

With the Orchestra of London.
Conductor - Ben Gunner.
Soloist - Susan Piggott.