Ivor

Among the sacred works for voice and orchestra that feature in the present release, only the Requiem has any bearing on the duties that Fauré performed as choirmaster and organist at the Madeleine in Paris between 1877 and 1906. Practically all of the works that he wrote for the Madeleine included an organ accompaniment. Fauré found his duties at the church constricting. Even when he wrote his Requiem, which strikes such a singular note, it was to distance himself from the sort of liturgical music with which he was habitually involved. “As to my Requiem,” he explained in 1902 with reference to his most famous work, “I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.” We should not forget that Fauré did not believe in God, which perhaps prevented him from blossoming as a church composer. Despite this, the present programme explores an interesting facet of his work.

For the album "The Secret Fauré", released in 2018, the Basel Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Principal Conductor Ivor Bolton received fantastic reviews: "The music of Fauré … unfolds its attraction only gradually and very subtly, with a gentle, addictive spell can make." (NDR Kultur) In his new album, the orchestra presents a number of other orchestral and concert works by the French composer, Gabriel Fauré.

The aria Ombra mai fu at the start of Act I of Handel's opera seria Serse (Xerxes) is likely to be its best-known asset. Serse was written in 1733-38, at the end of Handel's career as an opera composer: he concentrated on oratorio after 1741. It is a great achievement. Not least because it uses the music, and the marriage of words and music, to evoke in the audience pathos, sympathy, delight, and as much tempered ridicule as tempered tenderness.

The English harpsichordist and conductor, Ivor Bolton, was educated at Clare College and the Royal College of Music, followed by a year at the National Opera Studio which coincided with his appointment as conductor of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford.

Tenebrae and Nigel Short are joined by Aurora Orchestra together with mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and narrator Simon Callow for A Walk with Ivor Gurney, an album celebrating the music of Ivor Gurney whose promising career as a composer was interrupted by World War I. Alongside four pieces of Gurney’s own music are works by his contemporaries, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells. The recording features a new piece by Judith Bingham commissioned by Tenebrae in 2013 for the choir with Dame Sarah Connolly.