The keynote of the concert of the NFM Choir, the NFM Girls’ Choir, the NFM Boys’Choir and the Rondo Vocal Ensemble is the power of singing. The artists will present works by ten composers, including two works that will have their first performances during this concert.
The first, premiere work is Viderunt omnes fines terrae by Paweł Łukaszewski. This prolific artist and teacher (professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music) creates mainly sacred works. The title of the premiere work featured tonight translates as “All the parts of the earth have seen the salvation of our God”. The author of Laudate Dominum omnes gentes is Grzegorz Miśkiewicz, who specializes in writing sacred choral music, but he has also composed instrumental works and film music. Just as for the Polish composers, faith was also very important for Francis Poulenc. Although he is often associated with light and humorous music, his religious works are frequently serious, almost austere. One of them is the short motet Ave verum from 1952, written for women’s choir. French music is also represented in the programme by the festive Messe brève from 1875 by Leo Delibes, a Romantic composer.
Bring us, O Lord God and Faire is the Heaven is a work by William Henry Harris, organist, composer and teacher. He wrote for the famous Three Choirs Festival and conducted the vocal ensembles at the coronations of George VI in 1937 and Elizabeth II in 1953. Lux Aeterna was written by Edward Elgar, one of the most recognizable UK composers active in the 20th century. The featured work is a reworking of Nimrod, the famous ninth movement of Elgar’s Enigma.
The programme includes Krzysztof Penderecki’s Song of the Cherubim, written in 1987, a manifestation of the artist’s lifelong fascination with the Orthodox musical culture and a sixtieth birthday present for his friend, the famous cello virtuoso, Mstislav Rostropovich.
Born in 1991 in Zakopane, Michał Ziółkowski is a composer associated with the Academy of Music in Wrocław. During the concert, the artists will premiere his Gloria, written for three mixed choirs and two children’s choirs. The author of the mysterious Magnificat is a contemporary French artist, Jean-Charles Gandrille, born in 1982. The premiere of the work took place in June 2016 in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The concert will be crowned with a joyful composition by Ralph Vaughan Williams: Let All the World in Every Corner Sing, expressing the English artist’s still vivid conviction about the unifying power of singing.