Stargazers: Holst at 150

Gustav Holst was a composer who saw further than other artists: a creative spirit grounded in the heartland of British music, whose vision reached out to embrace English folksong, Hindu poetry and the outer limits of the cosmos itself. In his 150th anniversary year, St. Martin-in-the-Fields favourites the Carice Singers present an evening of Holst’s masterly choral music, including the Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, and in tribute to Holst’s lifelong commitment to new music, they interweave it with recent works inspired by the same sense of the limitless, including a brand new piece by Electra Perivolaris, specially composed for tonight.

Programme

Holst – The Evening watch 

Grace-Evangeline Mason – Stars above, Earth below 

Holst – Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda Group 3

Holst – Venus from The Planets (arr. solo harp) 

Holst – Sing me the men 

Urmas Sisask – Benedictio 

Holst – Two Eastern Pictures 

Electra Perivolaris – Weaving stars (World premiere) 

Holst – This have I done for my true love 

Charles Villiers Stanford – God and the Universe

Holst - Nunc Dimittis