The Outcry Ensemble and two outstanding choirs join forces for a programme exploring the essence of a great city as portrayed through its music, its history, its people and their perpetual sense of spirit.

The second concert in our ‘Music for a Great City’ series begins with Britten’s energetic Purcell-inspired Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, originally written for the London Symphony Orchestra, followed Copland’s Music for a Great City from which our series takes its name, an evocative homage to the vibrant pulse of urban life. The Te Deum by Stephen Dodgson, whose centenary we celebrate this year, interweaves the personal texts of Mary Tudor martyrs with the traditional ‘Te Deum’ text, in a work that is unsettled but ultimately inspires us with the beauty of calm, steadfast faith and internal strength in troubled times – only too relevant today. The concert concludes with Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, a dramatically ebullient choral tour de force portraying the biblical story of the fall of Babylon.