This is only the third performance of the 2019 significant seven-movement work from Cecilia McDowall which presents an imaginative pairing of extracts from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci with texts from the Latin Missa pro defunctis. Da Vinci’s reflective and penetrating insights into the nature of mortality and all that it encompasses cast new light on the familiar Requiem texts, and McDowall employs her orchestral forces to create a rich, atmospheric backdrop to the profound narrative presented by the chorus and soprano and baritone soloists.

Composed in 1926, Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite is one of his most popular orchestral works. Although originally composed as a piano duet, Warlock soon orchestrated the suite for both a string orchestra and a full orchestra set up. Based on a manual of Renaissance dances, Capriol Suite explores six different dances from the Renaissance period. Although each movement is short, Warlock is able to portray the mood and style of each movement with ease.

At the time of Haydn’s ‘Pauken’ and Nelson Masses, Napoleon’s rampaging armies had thrown Europe into turmoil. This sense of foreboding finds expression in the music, strikingly so in the Nelson Mass’ ominous Kyrie and a Benedictus rent by stabbing trumpet fanfares, most famously in the ‘Pauken’ Mass’ Agnus Dei, where the sinister timpani should, said Haydn, evoke the enemy approaching in the distance.