Programme Smith Preces and Responses Howells Collegium Regale Richard Blackford I will sing to the Lord Performers Three Cathedral Choirs Nicholas Freestone organ Adrian Partington conductor

Enjoy a fascinating talk and delicious lunch with the Holst and Stanford Societies. Charles Villiers Stanford taught composition at the Royal College of Music for forty years. His students were some of the twentieth century’s most successful British composers, including Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Professor Jeremy Dibble will discuss Stanford’s approach to teaching and why he believes that it was so successful.

Step into a magical world in Grace-Evangeline Mason’s The Imagined Forest, an enchanting musical picture of a wild woodland filled with colour, light and beauty. The mystical tones continue in Holst’s glorious The Hymn of Jesus, a call to join the joyful divine dance and a unique response to the suffering of the First World War. The concert’s second half features some of Charles Villiers Stanford’s finest and most compelling music in the Stabat Mater. A vivid musical depiction of the Passion and the sorrows of Mary, the intensity and drama of the opening subsides into ethereal beauty at the close, telling of the hope of redemption and life in paradise. https://3choirs.org/events/stanford-stabat-mater