Orchestra at St. Luke's Announces Music for Remembrance Concert

Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams sets powerful poetry to intensely expressive music with a refined and assured compositional skilL. Williams' texts were the Civil War poetry of Walt Whitman, a speech aiming to prevent the Crimean War by British parliamentarian John Bright, and the Bible (Book of Jeremiah). Overarching all the poetry is the ancient prayer Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace), sung at the beginning and at the end of the work by a lone soprano voice. With powerful lyricism honoring the sacrifice of all who fight for a cause while holding up their common humanity, Vaughan Williams depicts war's tumult and futility. 

Dona Nobis Pacem is paired with Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, a work for harp and strings, which Vaughan Williams composed on commission from the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Jesse Blumberg sings the baritone solo, Fear no more the heat o' the sun, a deeply moving setting of Shakespeare's verse from Cymbeline (Act IV, Scene 2), composed by Gerald Finzi, Vaughan Williams' good friend and younger English contemporary.  

The concert's other major work is the Requiem of 1605 (Officium Defunctorum), a masterpiece of the late Renaissance by Spanish composer, Tomás Luis de Victoria. With its restrained and fluent counterpoint, the Requiem is Victoria's last and greatest work composed for the funeral of the sister of King Philip II of Spain. 

For tickets ($30 - $75) call 212-664-9360 or visit saintthomaschurch.org.

 

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