In Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine composer Eric Whitacre and poet Charles Anthony Silvestri aim to conceptualize the sublime thoughts of renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci, an artist but also a visionary whose mind conceived terrible engines of war such as tanks but also flying machines.
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is the best known of his works which were a revolution in musical conception: Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), a shepherd and his barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, drunken dancers, hunting parties from both the hunters’ and the prey’s point of view, frozen landscapes, and warm winter fires.
The final work Cecilia MacDowell’s Da Vinci Requiem resents an imaginative pairing of extracts from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci with texts from the Latin Missa pro defunctis.
Harrogate Choral Society will be joined by soloists Sara Trickey, Violin; Eleonore Cockerham, Soprano and Gareth Brynmor John, Baritone. They will be accompanied by the National Festival Orchestra and conducted by the HCS’s Music Director David Lawrence