An Advent concert of seasonal British choral works by Arnold Bax and Cheryl Frances-Hoad anticipates Christmas joys to come.
Glowing with textural interest and intensity, as though lit from within, Frances-Hoad’s choral writing looks to the musical past for music that is very much of the present. Her carols and motets take us from festive rejoicing, in the exuberant Gaude et Laetare, to rapt wonder in There is no Rose. Bax – Master of the King’s Music under George VI – also draws on the carol’s medieval origins in his graceful I Sing of A Maiden and This Worldes Joie.
