The first time St Paul's Cathedral has hosted an in-person concert since lockdown: the City Music Foundation presents Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps

 

Olivier Messiaen's chamber masterpiece, Quatuor pour la fin du temps, will receive a live performance, with audience at St Paul's Cathedral on Friday 23 October 2020, performed by four City Music Foundation Artists, Emily Sun, violin, Ariana Kashefi, cello, Joseph Shiner, clarinet, Alexander Soares, piano. This will be the first time that the cathedral has been open for an in-person concert since lockdown. Tickets are free and available on a first come, first served basis. 

The idea behind the concert is to offer Londoners an opportunity for contemplation and reflection as we learn to live with the devastating effects of the pandemic, and the performance is linked to the Remember Me website created by St Paul's Cathedral as an on-line book of remembrance.

Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, inspired by the Book of Revelation, was written during his incarceration in a concentration camp and its instrumentation, violin, clarinet, cello, piano, was dictate by the instrumentalists available. The work was premiered 1941 in Stalag VIII-A, a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany (now Zgorzelec, Poland).

Full details from the City Music Foundation website.

Summer Music in City Churches

Summer Music in City Churches returns later this month (20-28 June 2019) with a series of concerts under the theme of Words and Music in some of the City of London's most historic churches, St Giles-without-Cripplegate, St Mary-le-Bow, St Stephen Walbrook, and St Lawrence Jewry next Guildhall plus St Bride's Fleet Street (where there is a festal Evensong).

The festival opens on 20 June 2019 with a concert from the City of London Choir, conductor Hilary Davan Wetton with a programme which references St Giles without Cripplegate where the concert takes place. John Milton, author of the text of Parry's Blest Pair of Sirens, is buried in the church, RVW's Three Shakespeare Songs set Shakespeare who lived in the parish for a while (and his nephews were baptised there) and Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb uses the poetry of Christopher Smart who was confined at nearby St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics. The City of London Choir is joining with the London Mozart Players for the festival's final concert on 28 June, which celebrates Shakespeare in music with works by RVW, Walton, Mendelssohn and Finzi plus dramatic readings of the plays.

Other festival events include soprano Grace Davidson and lutenist David Miller in songs by Campion, Dowland, Purcell and Humfrey, husband and wife team Thomas Humphreys (baritone) and Raya Kostova (piano) in Let us Garlands Bring with music by RVW, Finzi and Britten, and Sam West and the London Mozart Players in Walton's Facade. Pianist Elizabeth Sombart with join members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for arrangements of Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 5 for piano and string quintet.

Pianst Lucy Parham and actor Tim McInnerny will be performing Parham's portrait of the composer Rachmaninoff, Elegie: Rachmaninoff, A Heart in Exile, and piansit Mark Bebbington's literary themed recital will include music with literary associations from Shakespeare and Victor Hugo to Dodie Smith's I capture the castle (!) including Robert Matthew Walker's piano sonata Hamlet.

Full details from the festival website.