Napier Civic Choir’s April concert weekend offers music of colour and contrast, with two performances of ‘Sunrise Mass’ and the orchestral concert ‘Souvenir de Florence’.
Hawke’s Bay Orchestra and visiting players make up the 20-piece string orchestra for the concerts, which maestro José Aparicio conducts.
The choral concert explores the serenity and earthiness of Scandinavian music, around the famous Sunrise Mass by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. His setting of the Latin Mass uses English titles for each section - The Spheres, Sunrise, The City, Identity/The Ground - and Gjeilo describes the work “as a metaphor for human development from child to adult, or as a spiritual journey”.
The two choral pieces by Icelandic composers evoke the spare, atmospheric landscape of the country in their simple, exquisite expression. Included in the programme are two pieces for string orchestra, Grieg’s Two Nordic Melodies, with an unmistakable folk music feel, and Sibelius’s Romance in C Major, a whirlwind of emotions.
The Saturday evening orchestral concert is a wonderful opportunity to hear two arrangements from Chamber music works with the textures of a string orchestra.
