Music from the Americas

Saturday 17 March 2007
7.45 pm
St Barnabas Cathedral, Nottingham

directed by
Richard Roddis

Peter Palmer, Nottingham Evening Post, wrote:

'This concert of American music featured enormous contrasts in style. Under Richard Roddis's direction, the mixed voices of the Sinfonia Chorale sounded in magnificent form throughout.
'With its rich swirling textures, Charles Ives's Psalm 90 made a challenging opener. Organ and bells enhanced the serene final verses.
'The choir brought intensity to the instrumental Adagio that Samuel Barber arranged for a-cappella voices (“Agnus Dei”). Percussion played a role in a lively performance of Eric Whitacre's recent Cloudburst, based on a text by Octavio Paz.
'The second half was devoted to mainly Spanish Baroque composers who went to South America. With Philip Robinson at the keyboard, Nicolette Moonen led the expert period instrumentalists.
'Two settings of a popular verse-form were especially striking. One piece, depicting a bullfight, compared Christ's death to a toreador's. The other was an exuberant Christmas cantata.
'A native lyric and several devout Latin pieces completed the selection. Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, of Puebla Cathedral, provided a psalm setting and a Credo for double choir, and their beauty was vividly captured.'

This was a concert of Baroque music from South America and twentieth-century music from North America. Among the composers from the North represented were Charles Ives, Eric Whitacre and Samuel Barber - his acclaimed Agnus Dei, the vocal version of his instrumental Adagio.

The music from South America was centred on New World Symphonies - Latin American liturgical music of the 16th and 17th centuries, illustrating the grandeur and the exuberance of the Christian/Incan cross-culture of the Baroque New World.

The picture on the right is of La Compañía Church, Quito, Ecuador, built in 1605.

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