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Song of Flight
Paul Spicer and Birmingham Bach Choir return to Great Malvern Priory for a concert with a French flavour
Birmingham Bach Choir returns to Great Malvern Priory in Worcestershire, UK on Saturday 5 July 2025 for a French-flavoured concert. In La Belle France, the choir delves into music by Fauré, Poulenc and Debussy for an evening of song. The evening also includes the first performance of a new choral work by British composer Russell Hepplewhite.
Swiss composer Daniel Schorno at Great Malvern Priory in April 2025.
Photo © 2025 Keith Bramich
Written during 1945-1946, Parisian Francis Poulenc's song cycle Chansons Françaises consists of eight pieces. Based around popular traditional folk songs, the cycle boasts wide textures and brims with a buoyant energy and beauty that perfectly suits the spirit of the times.
Straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and published as a set in 1909, Claude Debussy's Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orléans consists of three songs. Though thematically unrelated, each is based around text by fifteenth century poet Charles, Duke of Orléans, and range from a rich love song ('Dieu! qu'il la fait!') to a berating of the winter months ('Yver, vous n'estes qu'un vilain').
The La Belle France programme concludes with two works by Gabriel Fauré - Cantique de Jean Racine and his Requiem.
Cantique de Jean Racine was penned by Fauré for a composition competition at the Parisian music school he was attending. Winning the then twenty-year-old composer the first prize, this gentle Romantic piece calls on a translation of a Latin hymn by seventeenth century dramatist and poet Jean Racine, and is regularly paired with the Requiem.
First performed in 1888, and later revised, the seven-part Requiem in D minor, Op 48 is arguably the composer's best known large work. Believed to have been in part inspired by the passing of his parents, Fauré, who altered the traditional religious text associated with such a piece, described it as a 'lullaby of death', a work 'dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest'.
Paul Spicer, conductor of the Birmingham Bach Choir, comments:
Debussy's impressionistic language makes his only unaccompanied choral work, the Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orleans, achingly memorable, while Francis Poulenc's beautifully crafted eight Chansons Françaises gives us a unique take on French folksong.
But at the heart of this programme are two heart-warming works by Gabriel Fauré, whose Requiem is one of the most deeply-felt choral works of the last century-and-a-quarter. It has deservedly become one of the most popular pillars of the choral repertoire.
English composer, conductor, organist, broadcaster, writer and public speaker Paul Spicer (born 1952) has conducted Birmingham Bach Choir for more than thirty years. To mark this thirtieth anniversary, the choir's 2022-2023 season included the first UK West Midlands performance in living memory of Rachmaninov's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom sung in Liturgical Slavonic.
Paul Spicer
In addition to the French programme, this 2025 Malvern summer evening concert also incudes the first performance of a new piece by British composer Russell Hepplewhite.
Well known for his works for stage, including multiple productions for English Touring Opera, Hepplewhite's inspirational Living Voices project sees ten poets reflect on the nuances of modern life for ten new choral works.
Each individual piece is set to be first performed by ten different UK choirs, with Birmingham Bach Choir invited to give the first performance of Song Of Flight, featuring text by poet, author and storyteller Jamila Gavin, known for her children's books, several with Indian contexts.
Jamila Gavin and Russell Hepplewhite
Birmingham Bach Choir's La Belle France can be heard at Great Malvern Priory, Church Street, Malvern, Worcestershire, UK at 7pm on Saturday 5 July 2025. The concert will also include solo French organ works played by Martyn Rawles, who also accompanies the choir. Tickets and further information: birmingham.bachchoir.com
Posted 22 May 2025 by Keith Bramich
