On the Eve of War

Harpenden Choral Society opens its 39th Season with On the Eve of War, a concert of choral and orchestral works by Haydn, Bridge, Holst, and Barber which reflect both the triumph and despair of human conflict. Conducted by Musical Director John Andrews and featuring soloists Alice Privett, soprano; Helen Johnson, alto; Chris Turner, tenor; and Andrew Mahon, bass, the concert will be accompanied by Roger Carter on the organ, with orchestral accompaniment by The King’s Sinfonietta.
The concert features Holst’s beautifully evocative settings of Two Psalms (numbers 86 and 148) as well as Bridge’s only work for chorus and orchestra, A Prayer. This elegiac setting of a prayer by Thomas à Kempis was written during the First World War, in a style that owes much to Stanford and Parry, and in which the influence of Holst can be clearly heard.
Accompanying orchestra, the King’s Sinfonnieta will perform Samuel Barber’s beautiful Adagio for Strings. First conducted as an orchestral work in 1938 under Toscanini, this eloquent lament has since become almost synonymous with the sorrows of war in the public imagination.
Sorrow gives way to triumph in Haydn’s Nelson Mass. Written under the terrifying shadow of the Napoleonic Wars in the summer of 1798, Haydn’s own title, in the catalogue of his works, was "Missa in Angustiis" or "Mass for Troubled Times". Legend has it that Haydn was at work on it when a courier arrived with the news of Admiral Nelson’s victory over the French at the Battle of the Nile and the announcement became translated into musical terms as the stirring trumpet fanfare at the end of the Benedictus section. The work is best known as the Nelson Mass because Admiral Nelson and Lady Hamilton attended a performance the Mass as the guests of Prince Esterházy during a visit to Eisenstadt

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