Saint Stephen’s presents When The Leaves Are Green, a summer concert by the Bristol Chamber Choir on Sunday 27 June at 3pm.
By mixing playful songs and madrigals with reverential anthems and motets, the concert brings the sunshine and shade of summer.
This varied programme consists of pieces by two English composers whose works have, unaccountably, been neglected for generations.
The first of these unsung heroes is Bristol-born Robert Lucas de Pearsall who, in 1837, helped to found the Bristol Chamber Choir in its original incarnation, the Bristol Madrigal Society.
Pearsall (1795-1856) is remembered chiefly for his grief-laden madrigal, Lay a Garland.
He also wrote some finely composed, light-hearted part-songs, a requiem, and anthems which rival Lay a Garland in their heart-wrenching chord progressions, majesty and texture. Examples of all can be heard in our concert.
The second is Londoner RJS Stevens (1757-1837). Gresham Professor of Music, organist at London’s Charterhouse, and devotee of Glee clubs. Stevens, like Pearsall, embraced the sacred and secular.
In all likelihood, not a note by Stevens has been sung in Bristol in living memory; strange given that his intricate and masterly Shakespeare part-songs are a joy to sing – and a joy to hear.
Stevens’s anthems are impressive too, full of light and shade: the two you will hear are unpublished jewels, transcribed from copies at the Fitzwilliam by the English tenor, Gordon Pullin, who recently sung at Saint Stephen’s in May 2010.
Talented Clifton guitarist, Jack Davies, adds another dimension with pieces by Samuel Wesley, and Ferdinand Sor.
Tickets £8 (£5 conc.) at the door or from Providence Music
