Brattleboro Concert Choir: In Paradisum – Music of Gabriel Fauré

The Brattleboro Concert Choir In Paradisum: Music of Gabriel Fauré featuring the Requiem, “Cantique de Jean Racine,” and “Tu es Petrus” with orchestra. The concerts are scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday, May 4, and 4 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at Persons Auditorium, Potash Hill, Marlboro.

“Our ‘In Paradisum’ concerts are meant to be a balm and a respite in stressful and troubling times,” says Musical Director Jonathan Harvey. “All three pieces on the program are by French Romantic Gabriel Fauré, whose music has an indefinable transcendent beauty. The American composer Aaron Copland once wrote of Fauré’s music that ‘those aware of musical refinements cannot help admire the transparent texture, the clarity of thought, the well-shaped proportions. Together they constitute a kind of Fauré magic that is difficult to analyze but lovely to hear.’ We hope this will be a special, soul-feeding concert, like a comforting musical blanket.”

He continues: “The central piece of the program is Fauré’s Requiem. Usually, musical Requiems are quite dark, fearful, and almost violent, since they are drawn from the Roman Catholic service for the dead.  Fauré’s is different – the core of the piece is for it to act as a comfort to those who are still living.”