This year’s Autumn Music for Friends of Forgue Kirk is a short programme of two contrasting halves, each containing a new work. The Spell of the Rose is the sixth extended setting of poems by Roger Bevan Williams and, although not a song cycle, musical ideas and motifs recur throughout. There are several different but intersecting strands – a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, with undercurrents of darkness and misunderstandings. Two people and a narrator are dealing with love and life, and the consequences of broken promises. The poem is full of precise and beautiful use of language, and the structure of this extended setting is of six tightly formed stanzas with an introduction and interludes between them.
A Song of Hope sets verses from Psalms 33, 96 and 97 for soprano, ‘cello and organ. The work is in five short movements. The first praises God for his goodness, the second for his power and the third for his providence. The fourth movement recognises the need for salvation and the final movement reflects the confidence to be placed in God.
The two halves of the concert begin with short organ improvisations by David J. Smith which are likely to be in a contemporary style, reflecting on the texts set by the two composers and possibly alluding to their thematic material.
Margaret Hearne will read the texts that have been set by the two composers.
In association with Friends of Forgue Kirk.
