A Midsummer Night's Serenade

Fittingly, a veritable banquet of Shakespeare concludes the 2019 festival in this most special venue, his local church. In 1842, Felix Mendelssohn wrote the ravishing incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is here performed alongside words (excerpts in abridged form) spoken by the multi-faceted actor Tama Matheson, whom we also hear in Walton’s Henry V Suite. Vaughan Williams adapts text from The Merchant of Venice for his Serenade to Music; fans of his composition The Lark Ascending will rejoice in his scoring, in particular the solo violin, but here with the added power of chorus, soloists and profoundly beautiful words:

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-midsummer-nights-serenade-tickets-59882594452

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

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Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Walton Henry V Suite

Finzi Love’s Labours Lost

Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music

London Mozart Players

City of London Choir

Hilary Davan Wetton, conductor

Tama Matheson, narrator*

Rebecca Bottone, soprano

Maya Wheeler-Colwell, mezzo soprano