Dove: For An Unknown Soldier
An Airmail Letter from Mozart
Nicky Spence (tenor), Melvyn Tan (piano)
Oxford Bach Choir, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Children’s Choir: The Minster Junior School Monks Orchard Primary School, Ecclesbourne Primary School, London Mozart Players, Nicholas Cleobury
By turns scamperingly hyperactive, tender and skittish, [An airmail letter from Mozart is] a delightfully endearing portrait of Mozart sketched in a modern accent, and a blast to listen to…Nocholas...
Dove: For An Unknown Soldier
An Airmail Letter from Mozart
Nicky Spence (tenor), Melvyn Tan (piano)
Oxford Bach Choir, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Children’s Choir: The Minster Junior School Monks Orchard Primary School, Ecclesbourne Primary School, London Mozart Players, Nicholas Cleobury
Purchase product
By turns scamperingly hyperactive, tender and skittish, [An airmail letter from Mozart is] a delightfully endearing portrait of Mozart sketched in a modern accent, and a blast to listen to…Nocholas...
About
'For An Unknown Soldier' is a cantata of remembrance to mark the centenary of the First World War. Commissioned by the London Mozart Players and Portsmouth Grammar School, Jonathan Dove’s poignant work combines the words of war poets such as Wilfred Owen, William Noel Hodgson & Isaac Rosenberg. It lay at the centre of a multi-faceted project that encompassed primary and secondary schools, nursing homes and the local communities of Portsmouth and Croydon. The world premiere of the work took place in November 2014 and there are plans to tour the project in 2018.
It is paired with the ensemble’s performance of Dove’s 'An Airmail Letter from Mozart', for 2 horns, string quartet and piano, directed by Melvyn Tan. Dove uses the 'Theme and Variations', and one or two other ideas, from Mozart’s Divertimento K287 to write an imaginary letter to his wife Constanze.
Contents and tracklist
- Nicky Spence
- London Mozart Players, Ecclesbourne Primary School, Oxford Bach Choir, Monks Orchard Primary School, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, The Minster Junior School
- Nicholas Cleobury
Awards and reviews
May 2017
By turns scamperingly hyperactive, tender and skittish, [An airmail letter from Mozart is] a delightfully endearing portrait of Mozart sketched in a modern accent, and a blast to listen to…Nocholas Cleobury does a sterling job of marshalling the forces [in For an unknown soldier], which include a combined children's choir, and tenor Nicky Spence, whose contributions are memorably plangent
February 2017
As always with Dove, the vocal writing is finely gauged. Children’s choirs merge seamlessly into and out of the Oxford Bach Choir, with Nicky Spence a highly eloquent focal-point and Nicholas Cleobury securing an animated response from the London Mozart Players. Anyone coming to these poems for the first time will be left in little doubt as to their emotional acuity…this disc [is] more than just a memento of a major occasion
11th November 2016
Dove has a profound feel for literature as well as a protean compositional talent...And Dove’s matchless experience of writing community operas is evident in the way that choirs of young children, older children (Portsmouth Grammar School) and adults (Oxford Bach Choir) are each given a distinct strand of the narrative … Nicky Spence is wonderfully tender in the tenor solos … it’s a marvellously atmospheric work and should be heard.
