Concert 4
Schütz REQUIEM 1635 with Schoenberg and Dreyfus
Sunday 4 December, 5 pm
Good Shepherd Chapel, Abbotsford Convent,
1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford
BOOK NOW
Heinrich Schütz, German Requiem (1635), soloists and choir
George Dreyfus, Does He Still Live, Josef Geisel? (2022), choir a cappella - first performance
Carl Nielsen, Afflictus Sum from Three Motets (1922), choir a cappella
Martin Friedel, Ponding from Sounding Royal Park (2020), recorded environment with electronics
Horatio : Prologue to The Measures Taken (1982), arr. for choir and piano
Allan Walker, Celan Fragment (2022), 8-part choir - first performance
Helen Gifford, Everything is plundered (2001), soloists and choir, poem by Anna Akhmatova
Arnold Schoenberg, Peace on Earth (1907), 8-part-choir
This concert traverses a dark path, from the Thirty Year Wars, with the epic expressive Requiem of Heinrich Schütz, to George Dreyfus's quietly dramatic memorial for a relative lost in the Shoah. Composed in his 94th year, this newest piece completes a trilogy of historical reminiscences for choir, the first two of which were performed by the Astra Choir in June.
Further 20th-century images emerge from a rich psalm setting of Carl Nielsen, from Schoenberg's lustrous vision for 'Peace on Earth' in the early century, and from Anna Akhmatova's transcending of destruction in the setting of Helen Gifford.
The concert also commemorates composer Martin Friedel following his death in early November. Allan Walker has composed his setting of Paul Celan for this occasion, and Martin Friedel's own music is represented in an environmental soundscape of a city park, and in his setting of Horatio's dark closing speech in Hamlet.
Astra Quarter-Hour Concerts #15 & 16
Short aural-video programs for online listening and viewing, assembled from the Astra Concerts archive from the 1950s to the present, and introducing new studio works from composers in the period of COVID-19.


Watch and listen to other Quarter-Hour Concerts