The BBC Proms (the world’s biggest classical musical festival) are upon us, and all the radio broadcasts are streamed free on the BBC website. (If you are in the UK you can watch video of some Proms or even go to them…a dream of mine.)
Lots of good programs, and a highlight so far is this premiere of a choral work for youth chorus by Latvian Eriks Esenvalds (a composer heard in DC last season) and setting this solemn text by Longfellow.
A Shadow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I said unto myself, if I were dead,
What would befall these children? What would be
Their fate, who now are looking up to me
For help and furtherance? Their lives, I said,
Would be a volume wherein I have read
But the first chapters, and no longer see
To read the rest of their dear history,
So full of beauty and so full of dread.
Be comforted; the world is very old,
And generations pass, as they have passed,
A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
The world belongs to those who come the last,
They will find hope and strength as we have done.
It’s part of the program for Prom 9: The World Orchestra for Peace conducted by Donald Runnicles (with a performance of the Britten “Sinfonia da Requiem”), but also is provided in a binaural mix, which gives an enhanced sense of the space in which the music was performed. An interesting track for fans of new choral music.
A Few Reasonable Words 