The opening concert of the King's Chapel Sunday Concert Series features two choral masterworks: Benjamin Britten's "The Company of Heaven", written in 1937, and Carson Cooman's "The Evening Choir," premiered earlier this year. Soprano Mary Sullivan and tenor Thomas Gregg are the soloists in this performance. Heinrich Christensen conducts the King's Chapel Choir & Orchestra, with guests John Grimes, timpani and Mark Dwyer, organ.
Benjamin Britten's "The Company of Heaven" is one of 25 commissions on behalf of BBC Radio for incidental broadcast between 1937 and 1947. He found the texts and the excellent singers and instrumentalists available for this project quite appealing; his diary notes that the orchestra said “that it’s the best incidental music they’ve ever played.” At every step in this piece, Britten makes us feel the transformation that ties all corners of the work together in the mind of a 24-year old composer who would continue in -- and surpass -- the English musical traditions of Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Herbert Howells.
Premiered in a BBC Radio program on 29 September 1937, Michaelmas Day -- in which images of angels and of war with Satan abound, "The Company of Heaven" plunges us into the middle of the war, first the Fall of the Angels, their ejection from Heaven, and the battle with the devil; and then the second war between Michael and Satan, the war in Heaven depicted in the Book of Revelation.
Doors to King's Chapel open at 4:30 PM. King's Chapel is wheelchair accessible.
