VU-Kamerkoor with Krista Audere, conductor - Benjamin Britten - Hymn to St Cecilia - Video

The VU-Kamerkoor with Latvian conductor Krista Audere sings Benjamin Britten's "Hymn to St Cecilia" (1942). Amsterdam, Vondel Church, Sunday 11 December 2016.

This is the very first piece I ever sang with this choir, but 30 years later. Krista Audere knows how to whip us into shape :-). The result is a wonderful, adventurous, sonorous rendition of what Britten wrote on the vessel back home to the UK, after a short, rather disappointing stay with the poet W.H. Auden in New York.

Auden presented Britten with a fabulous poem about St Cecilia, patron saint of composers, whose name day coincides with Britten's birthday (Oct 22nd). The reference to musical instruments in the third part is common in Odes to St Cecilia.

The middle part of the hymn ("I cannot grow, I have no shadow to run away from") is a riddling song. Can you guess who or what is meant?

By the way, during this performance a thief crept into our dressing room and stole hundreds of euro's from our belongings... Always lock the dressing room!