Elgar’s masterpiece in its 125th year: telling of one man’s journey from life to death.
To celebrate 25 years as musical director of the Elysian Singers, Sam Laughton has chosen Edward Elgar’s crowning achievement, his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, a setting of a poem by Cardinal John Newman. And this concert takes place almost 125 years after the Birmingham premiere on 3 October 1900.
The work opens with an old man praying with his friends as he faces his imminent death, and thereafter traces his soul’s journey, accompanied by his guardian angel, to the moment that he faces God himself, in a shattering moment of revelation. In the famous final farewell, the angel gently guides Gerontius to the soothing lake of purgatory, to await his final journey to paradise.
An extraordinarily deeply felt and expressive work in romantic style for three soloists, large chorus and orchestra, which Elgar said was ‘the best of me’.
