Harmonia Sacra
Musical Director Peter Leech
CONCERTS IN 2011/2012
ADVENT REFLECTIONS - 2nd DECEMBER 2012
Fresh from their prestigious Oxford debut performance at Christ Church Cathedral, Harmonia Sacra presented their annual feast of choral music for Advent and Christmas in the ethereal acoustics of St Thomas The Martyr. The programme included contemplative and atmospheric motets and anthems for the start of the Advent season by William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Attwood, and Tommaso Bai, as well as a new work, Veni spiritus, by talented young British Composer Lawrence Whitehead.
NOW THE POWERS OF HEAVEN - 26th October 2012
The a cappella style of the Sistine Chapel and other Papal churches in Rome endured long after the death of Palestrina. This concert featured works by leading composers in Baroque Rome, such as Tommaso Bai, Giovanni Battista Casali, Alessandro Scarlatti and Giovanni Giorgi, whose many unaccompanied choral offerings showed that there was still ample potential for composers to apply Baroque harmonic techniques to old choral forms.
CHERUBIM & SERAPHIM - 12th May 2012
A concert which launched Harmonia Sacra's first CD, comprising Russian Orthodox choral works from the reign of Empress Catherine the great to Tsar Nicholas II. The repertory included sublime choral fugues by Baldassare Galuppi (one of Catherine's Italian masters of the Imperial Cappella) and his pupil Dimitry Bortnyansky. Also included were rare performances of Cherubic hymns by Varlamov and Lvov, as well as Rachmaninov's immortal Bogoroditsye dyevo.
ADVENT REFLECTIONS - 27th November 2011
Harmonia Sacra presented a programme of ethereal choral music for Advent and St Andrew’s day from the late Renaissance to the present time. Highlights included excerpts from the sublime Missa Ave Regina Coelorum by Tomas Luis de Victoria, Andreas Christi Famulus by Cristobal de Morales, The Canticle of Zachariah by James MacMillan and a new choral work Christe redempte omnium by young British composer Lawrence Whitehead. The audience were invited to join with us for a small number of Advent carols
RUSSIAN ROCOCO - 3rd July 2011
A concert which traced the development of Russian choral music from the courts of Catherine the Great to Alexander III, in the superbly resonant acoustics of St Thomas the Martyr. Harmonia Sacra are recorded the same repertoire for their first CD, tracks from which featured on BBC Radio 3 in October 2011
REQUIEM (1605) - 8th May 2011
Harmonia Sacra commemorated the 400th anniversary of Victoria’s death in 1611 with a performance of his sublime six-part Requiem, interspersed with plainsong and additional motets which would have been expected at the grand funeral of an Empress from the world’s most powerful late-Renaissance Royal family.