Performance on 3 - BBC Singers/City of London Sinfonia/David Hill

Presented by Ian Skelly David Hill directs the BBC Singers and the City of London Sinfonia in this Holy Week concert, recorded at London's Cadogan Hall, of penitential sacred works for chorus and orchestra. The composers are two of musical history's most precocious figures - Felix Mendelssohn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mendelssohn's "Verleih' uns Frieden ("In thy mercy, grant us peace") and "Wie der Hirsch schreit nach firshcem Wasse" (his setting of words from Psalm 42 - "Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks") - are works completed in his twenties, not long after his ground-breaking 1829 public performance of J S Bach's "St Matthew Passion" whose influence can be heard in these works. Mozart's great Requiem in D minor which, unfinished at the composer's death in 1791, has been the subject of a number of stories and myths concerning the mysterious, sinister, stranger who allegedly commissioned it and who caused the sickly Mozart to believe that the Requiem would become his own musical epitaph. Mendelssohn - Die Schoene Melusina Mendelssohn - Verleih' uns Frieden Mendelssohn - Wie der Hirsch schreit - Psalm 42 op 42 Mozart completed Süssmayr: Requiem Katharine Fuge (soprano) Renata Pokupic (mezzo soprano) Andrew Kennedy (tenor) Matthew Brook (bass) City of London Sinfonia BBC Singers David Hill, conductor Followed by a focus on sacred music. Ian Skelly is joined by Harry Christophers, conductor of The Sixteen, to explore some of the music featured in the BBC4 series Sacred Music. Gorecki: Totus Tuus The Sixteen Harry Christophers (conductor) UCJ – REN 18CD Part: De Profundis The Sixteen Harry Christophers (conductor) UCJ 476160 Tavener: Song for Athene The Sixteen Harry Christophers (conductor) UCJ 476160 Gorecki: Symphony no 3 (2nd mvt) Dawn Upshaw (soprano) London Sinfonietta David Zinman (conductor) ELEKTRA NONESUCH 7559 79282-2, Tr 2 Tavener: Song for Athene The Sixteen Harry Christophers (conductor) UCJ 476160, Tr 2