NSO: Stanford 100

National Symphony Orchestra
Gerhard Markson conductor 
Máire Flavin soprano
Sharon Carty mezzo-soprano
James Way tenor
John Molloy bass
National Symphony Chorus
David Young choral director
 
Stanford Requiem

Former NSO Principal Conductor Gerhard Markson returns to conclude the NSO’s centenary commemorations of Dublin-born Charles Villiers Stanford’s death with one of his crowning glories: the monumental and moving Requiem. 

Admired by Verdi and cast on the grandest of scales, it is a heartfelt and tender work of involving intimacy and blazing faith in which Stanford’s mastery of drama, opera, song and orchestration come triumphantly together.  

Did you know?

Although born in Dublin, Stanford lived most of his life in London where he became one of the most important voices in Anglican Church music.

He began composing aged four and gave his first piano recital aged nine.

A prolific composer, the Requiem was just one of 30 large-scale choral works, he also found time to teach, his pupils including Holst and Vaughan Williams.

His Requiem, inspired by the death of the painter, Lord Frederic Leighton, and is notable for its use of the Catholic Mass.

Listen out for…

The entry of the organ and brass in the first movement after the choir’s ecstatic declaration of ‘et lux’ (‘and light’).

The liquid floating, rising and falling of choral and solo voices against the orchestra’s angelic lightness of touch in the ‘Kyrie’.

The heart-stopping moment of silence in the ‘Dies Irae’ that foregrounds Stanford’s sense of profound loss.

The orchestra surging through the ‘Agnus Dei’ towards the rousing ‘Lux aeterna’ that leads to the luminous warmth of the ending.