'It feels like a poem that straddles two worlds- where the living and the dead strive to meet and touch…'
A commission from Crouch End Festival Chorus, Jessica Curry's latest work is Echo - a 17-minute setting for choir and orchestra of a poem by Christina Rossetti.
It receives its first performance in Alexandra Palace Theatre, London on Sunday 24 October, with the choir conducted by its Music Director, David Temple. The programme is completed by Mozart's Requiem and Brahms' Schicksalslied. More info and tickets here.
The composer writes:
‘Echo’ is a poem that I’d had in the back of my consciousness for some time, so when Crouch End Festival Chorus got in touch to say that they’d like me to write a piece for them a plan started to form. The poem has one of the most beautiful, extraordinarily redolent opening lines: “Come to me in the silence of a dream”- it’s so immediately evocative, so-otherworldly and so ripe for setting to music. It feels like a poem that straddles two worlds- where the living and the dead strive to meet and touch - and Rossetti implores her lost one to “Come back to me in dreams.”
More about the work here.
Echo is scored for SATB chorus and orchestra:
2222 - 2230 - timp - org - strings