In the Round

The dramatic domed hall at the Bahá’í Centre of Learning in Hobart, our venue for this concert, has inspired us to explore all things round.

Shakespeare’s plays were performed ‘in the round’, and our performance includes three settings of Shakespearean texts – two from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ set of three (Full Fathom Five, The Cloud-Capp’d Towers), and one by contemporary Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (Double, Double, Toil and Trouble).

Our program also features a set of music by Thomas Tallis – his famous motets Loquebantur Variis Linguis and Videte Miraculum – and on this occasion it is the choir itself that will be round: we will perform this glorious music in a vast circle, literally ‘around’ the audience. We’ll also perform the beautiful melody known as Tallis’ Canon (because it is gorgeous, and because a ‘canon’ is a form of musical ‘round’).

C. H. H. Parry’s six intensely personal Songs of Farewell were written during the First World War, during which a number of his pupils were killed or injured. They indicate a wish to escape the violence of this world and find a place of eternal peace. We sing three of these pieces, the last of which brings us back to the inspirational dimensions of our concert space, At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners.