Date/Time
25/11/2017 (00:00)

Location
Bedford Corn Exchange

Saturday, November 25th 2017
Bedford Corn Exchange – 7.30pm

Conductor: Ian Smith
With Bedford Sinfonia
Soloists: Rebecca Bottone (soprano), Louise Crane (mezzo soprano) (replacing Jeanette Ager),
Ben Thapa (tenor), Andrew Slater (bass)

The November Concert in our 150th Anniversary Season …

The Kingdom (1906) was originally intended as the second part of a trilogy, of which The Apostles (1903) was the first part.  The final part, The Last Judgement was planned but never completed.  The Apostles and The Kingdom share many motifs and Elgar intended them to be performed on consecutive days.  The Kingdom is a kind of contemplative slow movement of the projected trilogy.  The piece is set in Jerusalem, around the time of Pentecost, shortly after Jesus’s crucifixion, and concerns the life of the early Christians.

Elgar combines spirituality and nobility with a popular style.  In this work he seems likely to have been influenced by Parsifal, which he saw twice at Bayreuth in 1892, but there is also a gracefulness closer to the style of Bizet.  The influences of Schumann and Brahms on his harmonic language are also clear.