Pegasus performed a free concert in one of London’s most striking churches – celebrating the light and colour of France.
The hour-long programme of masterpieces by French composers, and composers inspired by France, included sacred motets and secular anthems from Renaissance masters Jean Mouton, Claudin de Sermisy and Orlande de Lassus, and Romantic vignettes from Reynaldo Hahn, Pierre Villette and Frederick Delius. The contemplative beauty of Gabriel Fauré’s “Cantique de Jean Racine” was contrasted with the ecstatic exuberance of Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur’s “Epithalame”. There were also three chansons each from Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, the Impressionists at their most sensuous, subtle and surprising.
The venue for the afternoon was the eighteenth-century splendour of St. George’s, Bloomsbury, the final London church designed by the leading architect of the English Baroque, Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Director – Matthew Altham
Pianist – Martin Toyer
Audience feedback: “Great concert. Really enjoyed it and lots of pieces I hadn’t heard before” – DB, via Facebook