I’ve accepted invitations to take part in in a couple of concerts in Holy Week. On Palm Sunday I shall be singing Rejoice in the Lamb for the first time in over a decade. I remember it accurately enough, but also make the same mistakes as I used to! Despite (or perhaps because of) the rather dotty words, I prefer it to Brittens Hymn to St. Cecilia.
On Good Friday I shall be singing in Durufléis Requiem in Oxford. Conductor, organist and both soloists are all known to me by a variety of routes, so it should be fun socially. I prefer this setting to the Fauré, which I find can be insipid. On the other hand I’ve been over-exposed to it, mainly because Duruflé was a cult composer in some of the circles I moved in in Cambridge, and I’ve never considered his music to be that special. I would be happy never to perform Ubi caritas et amor again, and not just because the sopranos don’t do much in it!
Westminster Cathedral will let us do the Tallis Mass setting, and we are negotiating how to share Sheffield Cathedral with various other things that are going on there the weekend we visit.
I am a great fan of Durufle…but I have never sung Rejoyce in the Lamb. You enjoy it more than Britten? Interesting. I loved singing the Hymn to St Cecilia. Then, as a bass/baritone, I found it to be cool.
Tallis Mass? REally?