Concert start time: 6pm

Ethel Smyth The Wreckers Overture
William Grant Still Wailing Woman
Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem

Crouch End Festival Chorus
London Orchestra da Camera
Francesca Chiejina Soprano
Oliver Zwarg Baritone
David Temple Conductor

Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem is considered by many (including CEFC’s conductor David Temple) to be the greatest of all the Requiems, and given the competition, that is no mean feat. Unlike most Requiems, Brahms does not set the Latin Requiem Mass but instead uses his own native German language, focusing more on those who are left to mourn than those who have departed. It is a work of great comfort, with moments of joy as well as sadness.

William Grant Still’s work Wailing Woman was written in 1946. The music and the words – by Verna Arvey, the wife of the composer – highlight the similarities between the black and the Jewish experience of prejudice. Starting the concert will be Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers Overture which begins her opera, recently performed at Glyndebourne and the BBC Proms in 2022.