Spring Concert

This concert features music by French composers working in Paris: they all knew one another and influenced or performed another's work. The concert opens in a mode of joy and celebration, includes Poulenc's popular and joyful Organ Concerto, and ends with Duruflé's beautiful Requiem with its sense of serene optimism.

During her short life Lili Boulanger developed a distinctive personal style, and composed a huge variety of works, all with great inventiveness. The Hymne au soleil (Hymn to the sun) for mixed choir, alto solo, and piano, was written in 1912 to a poem by Casimir Delavigne.

Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, completed in 1938 is one of his most famous works. Although called a concerto, it’s actually more like a fantasia in a single movement. While writing the concerto he obtained technical advice from Maurice Duruflé (who gave the work’s première in 1939).

Fauré’s Pavane is a short work written in 1887, based on the slow processional Spanish court dance of the same name. Fauré described it as "elegant, assuredly, but not particularly important", but it has become one of his most popular works.

Duruflé published only eleven works, most of which have liturgical themes and texts. Duruflé's beautiful Requiem is his most famous piece, akin to Fauré's familiar setting in its sense of serene optimism.

For more information visit https://www.hardyngechoir.org/dbpage.php?pg=Concerts