Hesperos returns this spring with a programme of tenderness and transcendence: Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem and Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands.
Duruflé’s Requiem, performed in its version for organ and string quartet, is one of the most beloved choral works of the twentieth century, a meditation on rest and light shaped by the gentle contours of Gregorian chant.
Shaw’s To the Hands (2016) was written in response to Buxtehude’s Ad manus from Membra Jesu Nostri. Scored for choir and strings, its six movements move from meditative chant-like sonorities to raw cries of displacement and compassion. Drawing on Latin verse, Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” and data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Shaw’s work transforms the image of Christ’s wounded hands into a wider reflection on exile, refuge, and the ways we hold one another.
We finish with Bach’s motet Fürchte dich nicht: “You are mine, for I grasp on to you and do not allow you, O my light, to leave my heart. Let me, let me reach toward you, that you might lovingly embrace me, as I do you.”
Programme
Requiem - Maurice Duruflé
Da pacem Domine - Arvo Pärt
Interval
To the Hands - Caroline Shaw
Prelude
in medio / in the midst
Her beacon-hand beckons
ever ever ever
Litany of the Displaced
i will hold you
Fürchte dich nicht BWV 228 - J.S. Bach