Summer Prom
June 29th 2024 7.30 p.m.
Unity Hall Southborough TN4 0NA
Programme:
Vaughan Williams – Wasps Overture
Lauridsen – Nocturnes
Walton – Façade Suite no. 2
INTERVAL
Tchaikovsky – 1812 Overture
Wood – Fantasia on British Sea Songs
Ives – Name that Tune
Handel – Hallelujah Chorus
Holst – Jupiter
Our Summer Prom gives us a chance to present some much-loved pieces with a sprinkling of work that may be new to you, but all are pleasing and, in some cases, patriotic.There are dances and battles, sadness and joy, and celebrations of life in them, and all are enjoyable to listen to.
We hope the only wasps present will be those in Vaughan William’s Wasps Overture, but any anxieties about these insects will surely be calmed by Morten Lauridsen’s Nocturnes, with its beguiling and calm melodies. Then there will be the rousing Façade Suite No2 to provide enough energy to persuade you out into what we hope will be a sunny piazza for the interval – perhaps with a cool drink.
When you come back to your seats there will be lots that will make you want to hum along with us. We may make you into cannons for the 1812 Overture, and you cannot fail to tap your feet to parts of the Fantasia on British Sea Songs. Derived from sailors’ work songs, these jolly tunes hide the fact that life on board was often hard and uncomfortable, but we’ll take your mind off any of these discomforts as we challenge you to Name that Tune, a series of orchestral favourites recreated but the choir.
You don’t have to stand for the Hallelujah Chorus, even though it has become traditional to do so – although no-one really knows how that came about. As we close the evening you may be invited to join in the hymn I vow to thee my country, set to Holst’s Jupiter from the Planets Suite. Either way, you will almost certainly leave Unity Hall humming one of the tunes heard during the evening’s entertainment!
