EVENTS // Bel a cappella

CONTENT COURTESY BEL A CAPPELLA

Bel a cappella is proud to present its first concert of their 2018 subscription series, To the Hands, including Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem and American composer Caroline Shaw. The group will perform under the direction of its musical director Anthony Pasquill at 3pm April 8 in Christ Church St Laurence.

Bel a cappella will perform a stunning work by Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw. Her composition To the Hands begins and ends with strains of Buxtehude’s own Ad manus from his composition Membra Jesu Nostra, with small harmonic and melodic references woven occasionally throughout. This will be an Australian premiere performance of the work.

The design of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in D minor for solo violin puzzled commentators for centuries: why, besides the standard sequence of baroque dance-forms, did Bach then add its huge chaconne movement? The German scholar Professor Helga Thoene suggests that the work commemorates the composer’s first wife, Maria Barbara, and funereal Lutheran melodies are woven into the music’s fabric. Her revelations are sung as the violin plays in this special version.

The choir will be joined by violinist Gemma Lee (2017 Sydney Symphony Orchestra Violin Fellow) for this stunning collaboration.

Fauré’s Requiem, in exactly the same funereal key of D minor, follows the chaconne seamlessly. This scaled-down version of his famous masterwork for choir, string quintet and organ underlines the work’s quiet individuality and restraint. As Fauré himself put it, ‘someone has called it a lullaby of death. But that’s how I see death: as an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience’.

Bel a cappella has two other concerts in its 2018 series, Salve Regina in August and Threshold of Night in November. The group is also embarking on its second European Tour in May this year to Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

Tickets for To the Hands are available online for $40/$30/$20 at belacappella.org.au, or at the door for $45/$35/$20.