The Romantics
Choral works by Mendelssohn, Schubert and Brahms
Saturday 5 July, 2025 7.30 pm
St Gabriel’s,
Warwick Square,
Pimlico,
London SW1V 2AD
In the nineteenth century, Romanticism in music was characterised by an emphasis on emotional expression, individualism and freedom from the formal restraints of the Classical period. Composers explored a wider range of emotions, experimented with harmony and instrumentation, and drew inspiration from literature, nature
and folklore.
CML’s summer concert features the work of three pioneers of the Romantic period: Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), all of whom left a rich legacy of exquisite choral music.
From Schubert’s wide-ranging output, the choir performs a selection of his gracefully subtle part-songs.
Psalm texts inspired Mendelssohn throughout his composing career. In 1837, Robert Schumann judged Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 42 as “the highest level that he has achieved as a composer of church music, indeed the highest level that modern church music has ever reached”. Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer for solo soprano and choir (1844), which features the perennial crowd-pleaser O for the Wings of a Dove, sets words from Psalm 55.
Nänie, Brahms’s moving musical lamentation, sets to music words by the German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), whose Ode To Joy was famously adapted by Beethoven for the last movement of his ninth symphony.
Join Collegium Musicum of London Chamber Choir and its talented conductor Greg Morris for what promises to be a memorable summer’s evening of inspired music-making.
