A Centenary Concert Commemorating The First World War Armistice

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St Simon’s Choir and Players with Musical Director David Hoyland on 11th November

On Sunday 11 November 2018 at 3pm, St Simon's Choir & Players will give a concert commemorating the First World War Armistice - entrance is free.

The programme features two exquisite and very popular works by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. His Requiem was premiered in Paris in 1888 but was not performed in England until 1936. The composer said he saw death “as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.” The Cantique de Jean Racine, composed when Fauré was only nineteen years old, has many similarities with the Requiem written twenty years later.
Interspersed with the music will be readings from the Great War poet, Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action on 4 November 1918. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death one week later as the church bells were ringing to celebrate the Armistice.

St Simon’s Choir sings at Mass every Sunday at 11.15. It also has a long tradition of performing an annual Christmas concert, with occasional performances at other times, when it is often joined by talented local musicians. The Musical Director, David Hoyland, is a well-known organist and composer who has worked with the choir for more than twenty years.

Appropriately for Remembrance Sunday there will be a retiring collection for the Royal British Legion.

St Simon’s Church, Hazlewell Rd, SW15 6LU

October 22, 2018